politics for the 99%

… an Interview With Noam Chomsky – Published on truthout, by C.J. Polychroniou, Dec 11, 2916.

… C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, in several of your writings you question the usual view of the United States as an archetypical capitalist economy. Please explain.

• Noam Chomsky: Consider this: Every time there is a crisis, the taxpayer is called on to bail out the banks and the major financial institutions. If you had a real capitalist economy in place, that would not be happening. Capitalists who made risky investments and failed would be wiped out. But the rich and powerful do not want a capitalist system. They want to be able to run the nanny state so when they are in trouble the taxpayer will bail them out. The conventional phrase is “too big to fail.”
• The IMF did an interesting study a few years ago on profits of the big US banks. It attributed most of them to the many advantages that come from the implicit government insurance policy — not just the featured bailouts, but access to cheap credit and much else — including things the IMF researchers didn’t consider, like the incentive to undertake risky transactions, hence highly profitable in the short term, and if anything goes wrong, there’s always the taxpayer. Bloomberg Businessweek estimated the implicit taxpayer subsidy at over $80 billion per year.

Much has been said and written about economic inequality. Is economic inequality in the contemporary capitalist era very different from what it was in other post-slavery periods of American history? … //

… After World War II, and pretty much up until the mid-1970s, there was a movement in the US in the direction of a more egalitarian society and toward greater freedom, in spite of great resistance and oppression from the elite and various government agencies. What happened afterward that rolled back the economic progress of the post-war era, creating in the process a new socio-economic order that has come to be identified as that of neoliberalism?

• Beginning in the 1970s, partly because of the economic crisis that erupted in the early years of that decade and the decline in the rate of profit, but also partly because of the view that democracy had become too widespread, an enormous, concentrated, coordinated business offensive was begun to try to beat back the egalitarian efforts of the post-war era, which only intensified as time went on. The economy itself shifted to financialization. Financial institutions expanded enormously. By 2007, right before the crash for which they had considerable responsibility, financial institutions accounted for a stunning 40 percent of corporate profit. A vicious cycle between concentrated capital and politics accelerated, while increasingly, wealth concentrated in the financial sector. Politicians, faced with the rising cost of campaigns, were driven ever deeper into the pockets of wealthy backers. And politicians rewarded them by pushing policies favorable to Wall Street and other powerful business interests. Throughout this period, we have a renewed form of class warfare directed by the business class against the working people and the poor, along with a conscious attempt to roll back the gains of the previous decades.

Now that Trump is the president-elect, is the Bernie Sanders political revolution over? … //

… (full interview text).

(C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His main research interests are in European economic integration, globalization, the political economy of the United States and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published several books and his articles have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into several foreign languages, including Croatian, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish).

Links:

IRAQ, how it was and how it is;

Mainstream Media: The Real Source Of Fake News, on Countercurrents.org, by Nauman Sadiq, Dec 11, 2016 … OPWAK3UP on Google Images-search;

China Opens Its Markets to World—World Says No Thanks, on The Wall Street Journal WSJ, by GREGOR STUART HUNTER, ANJIE ZHENG and RACHEL ROSENTHAL, Dec. 11, 2016: Beijing wants foreign funds to come to China, but pricey markets and weakening yuan keep them away;

How Standing Rock Has Changed Us, on Countercurrents.org, by Sarah van Gelder, Dec 11, 2016;

Keiser Report – Episode 1004, 27.50 min, on RT, Dec 10, 2016 (also on its website, Max Keiser);

North Pole Elves Call Boycott over Toy Workshop Offshoring, on Labor Notes, by Alexandra Bradbury, Dec 8, 2016;

Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter Become the Gatekeepers, on New Eastern outlook NEO, by Phil Butler, Dec 8, 2016: News that Google, Microsoft, and Facebook will collaborate to censor their definition of terrorism on their collective networks signals Orwellian times to come. New EU legislation, hints at McCarthyism in America and Europe, and the proven collusion in between Silicon Valley and governments should signal a counter-revolution. Here’s a look at why …;

Inside Able Archer 83, the Nuclear War Game that Put U.S.-Soviet Relations on “Hair Trigger”, on National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 569, by Nate Jones, Dec 6, 2016 (Documents 1 – 5): New Book Publishes Former Top Secrets from CIA, NATO, and Soviet Politburo;

If Trump moves to heal ties with Russia, establishment will oppose him fiercely – Stephen Cohen, VIDEO on RT, Nov 11, 2016 … An outcome that no mainstream media outlet predicted, a victory that the elites decried – the people have voted to make Donald Trump the next US president. Millions of Americans are tired of being ignored and want radical change … We ask professor emeritus at Princeton University, contributing editor at The Nation magazine, Stephen Cohen …;

Past Left Forum Conferences, on left forum/past conferences (2005 – 2016, download Videos and PDFs);

Remember: Crosstalk on Nulandistan, Video with Peter Lavelle, 26.58 min, on RT, April 23, 2014;

… and this:

• Devils Path, Trail in the Catskill Mountains, New York, US, on Google Images-search;
• Devil’s Path Traverse, 25 miles, on MeetUp, May 19, 2012 – REQUIREMENT: Take note that this is big hike and a very strenuous one. For the group to be successful, this hike requires strong hikers, a lot of preparation and solid teamwork. This hike is only open to regular members who have done the required hikes noted below and have shown preparedness during our latest hikes;
• ..
• on Google-Earth: Catskill Mountains, New York State, USA.