Tonight we will be looking at thepower and the influence of the wealthy - namely those who control and influencehow money is circulated and concentrated - and how politics and the economy ofthe world can NOT serve their proper purpose unless the problem of"financialization" is understood.
We all have a commonunderstanding that there is a major problem with the way financial poweraccumulates in the hands of only the few major corporations and financialinstitutions while the remaining majority become increasingly disempowered -but what we have not been clear on is the understanding of"financialization" and how this concept has radically impacted everyaspect of politics, economic theory, and global financial systems in a way thatis now becoming too dangerous and consequential to ignore.
But HOW did it get this way?At what point did it all really get out of control? How is it that so muchmoney was able to be concentrated while more and more debt was being createdand pushed onto the majority of people who were not fortunate enough to be partof the financial elite? We have to understand financialization's part increating the current situation in the world.
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From Wikipedia:
Financialization is a term sometimes used in discussions of financial capitalism which developed over recent decades, in which financial leverage tended to override capital (equity) and financial markets tended to dominate over the traditional industrial economy and agricultural economics.
Financialization is a term that describes an economic system or process that attempts to reduce all value that is exchanged (whether tangible, intangible, future or present promises, etc.) either into a financial instrument or a derivative of a financial instrument. The original intent of financialization is to be able to reduce any work-product or service to an exchangeable financial instrument, like currency, and thus make it easier for people to trade these financial instruments.
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Before we begin, it isimportant for us to NOT give in to the idea that we are in any way lessqualified to speak on or take responsibility for the concepts that I will beopening up here. There is a very dangerous assumption within humanity thateconomics and finance are "complicated" and cannot be understood bythe "lay person" - this is a very specific piece of propaganda thatis being pushed into the awareness of the majority each time we see a"financial expert" in the media explaining what is happening in theeconomy and will speak in a technical language that seems so scientific and mathematicallycomplex that we do not strain ourselves to question it, simply because we donot have an equal understanding of the words being used and so we simply"trust" that what we are told and what we are shown is accurate whenin fact NO SINGLE economist or financial expert has been able to actuallyexplain the full detail of the situation or the actual consequences involved -because they either have no clue about how it actually works, or they have someunderstanding and insight but are deliberately controlling the information theygive and how they give it - because they understand the value of"trust" in a way that the majority has not understood - theyunderstand that "trust" is asset that can be traded and used forprofit as long as people rely on trust instead of actual understanding.
The secret of finance andmanipulation is that it is deceptively SIMPLE. The amount of confusion thatcomes from manipulating financial systems is what creates the profit - becausethe complexity creates room for all manner of things to happen and creates akind of chaos that hides the actual nature of the transactions - things that ifleft exposed and open would cause the general public to react in a way thatwill remove "trust" in the system, and would in turn drasticallyreduce or remove the ability of financial "experts" to create"profit" from the confusion.
In"financialization" the more profit you want to create - the moreconfusion you have to generate - because in the confusion and chaos andartificial 'complexity' there is movement and there are people who"trust" the movement of the system, and will pay money and invest init believing that they can make a profit and willingly make themselves part ofthe movement and part of the complexity - part of the very chaos that isnecessary to hide the fact that all of this activity that is apparentlygenerating "wealth" and "profit" is actually entirely madeup and based on bogus accounting designed NOT to create a stable financialsystem where all are able to benefit, but instead to create the most confusingand needlessly complex system possible so that in the ensuing chaos hugeamounts of money are able to be concentrated into the hands of a few at theexpense of the many, who end up caught in the trap of trying to solve animpossible and illusionary puzzle, still believing that there must be somelegitimate way this system must work, which will eventually make them wealthywhen in fact the system was only meant to keep them investing more and gettingless in return.
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The Roots of Financialization
It is difficult to say exactlywhen financialization became what it is today, but its roots can be seen asearly as the 1960s in America when more and more people were becominginterested in the notion that having less regulation and more freedom to investand be creative with money would produce greater welfare for everyone, and inthe 1970s this idea became more popular due to the works of economists such asMilton Friedman who spoke about the benefits of having a free market systemwhere there was little control or constraint and popularized the idea ofminimal government oversight especially when it came to economic activity.
By 1999 this idea lead to theofficial repeal of the Glass Steagall Act which was a set of bankingregulations put into place in the United States in 1933 which meant to preventcommercial banks from investing pensions and depositor money in financialinstruments that are handled by investment and securities firms. This meant thatofficially, the money in a commercial bank would be available to use in orderto "speculate" or make bets in the financial market. On the one hand,commercial banks had an opportunity to make money on money that they wereholding for their customers, and on the other hand investment firms now hadeven more money with which to create "financial instruments" based onthe new influx of capital and money from commercial banks.
To break this down further -this means that banks no longer had to worry about having to make profitthrough making loans to people and having to make sure that they only loaned topeople who can pay back the bank plus interest which the bank needed to remainprofitable and stay in business. Now, banks can make all kinds of loans to allkinds of people and they could now trade these loans with investment firms whowould turn these loans into "financial instruments" that could thenbe further repackaged in many different ways and then resold to otherinvestment firms or fund managers - all of this creating a large amount ofactivity and complexity - and in this complexity the concept of"financialization" was born - the idea that you could take somethingof value such as manufactured products, labor, or agricultural goods andresources, property, or even debts owed to a bank - and convert that into a"financial instrument" that can be sold, converted again into anotherkind of financial instrument, and sold again and again.
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Frankenstein's Monster
The ability to create money out ofnothing and collect interest on lending it out to borrowers, and being able tosell and repackage those debts into financial instruments that could then beused to speculate on and influence other markets such as food, governmentbonds, and commodities spread like wildfire throughout the financial system -and across the world these financial instruments were sold, repackaged, andthen sold again so many times that its original value (if indeed it had any) can no longer bedetermined, but the debt that was created when the instrument was sold couldnot be discharged or forgiven because it was impossible to pay back somethingthat was created out of nothing, and demands more than nothing as repayment.
To break this down even simpler -
Being able to understand that youcannot give back more than what is given to you unless you take from somebodyelse is the only key that anyone needs to be able to see THROUGH the trickeryand deception of the financial system and anything that has come out of itshybrid breeding chambers that have produced the illusion of profit and growth -because the only thing that has grown is the amount of money the financialelite have been able to keep for themselves while the debt is constantly beingpushed onto the majority trying to pay back something that can never be repaid.
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Frankenstein's Master
Through the use of financial leverage - the ability to use greater amounts of capital (money) in exchange for greater returns on investment - money is very quickly accumulated to those who have access to money - which creates a situation where those who have the most money will be chronically unable to STOP making money - simply because the act of having a large sum of money itself creates profit through interest that the rest of the economy is busy trying to pay back but NEVER WILL because it is mathematically impossible.
This is a big reason for why, within a few decades so much wealth inequality has developed all across the world - and how it is that money becomes concentrated in the hands of those who have the most money and access to financial leverage while those who don't will have little or no access and will instead be completely distracted by the ILLUSION that they apparently require to pay back their debts and continue participating in the deliberate chaos and confusion of the financial systems of the world so that they can eventually become wealthy as well, or at least stop being poor.
It is no wonder that those with large amounts of financial power also have the most political and economic influence. They have the ability to afford what the majority cannot - because they determine the prices and they determine the availability of money. The financial elite have access to the best education, the best health systems, the best in new innovations, the best opportunities for new investment, the best chances to succeed or at least pass on the losses to others, the best access to lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, fund managers, accountants, media outlets, and public relations agents all of whom must labor so that they can become wealthy and gain influence and power, or at least pay off and cancel some of the debt that they had either been born into, or had to take on as a matter of survival within the current system.
This is how the financial elite accumulate and concentrate power through financialization - putting a price on everything and then controlling who gets access to money and financial leverage and thus controlling who gets to buy and who doesn't.
If financialization and endless combinations of debt that are sold for profit and distorts the value and price of actual goods and services (as well as government bonds and securities that entire cities and counties depend on) is the Frankenstein Monster that threatens to choke the life out of everything in its path - then the financial elite can be said to be the master of that very monster.
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The Road Ahead
The current economic system as wellas the political systems of the world are held captive by the Frankenstein'sMonster that has been created through financialization - and here what must beunderstood by the REAL Politicians of the world - is that financialization isnot something that was done to us by the financial elite alone.Financialization happened and continues to happen because of the way we eachINDIVIDUALLY continue to accept without question the values and prices thathave been set based on fraudulent accounting, and continue to believe that justbecause we do not "understand" the complexity of the financialsystem, that it means we are not principally responsible for its design orfunction.
We have got to consider that thefinancial system is not meant to be "understood" and it is NOT meantto "make sense" - it is a scheme that we have allowed ourselves tofall for to such an extent that questioning it seems blasphemous and we wouldsooner accept a warped and distorted version of financial reality than theactual truth.
Each day, we look at the prices ofthe goods and services we want without questioning how such a price was arrivedat. We demand that our goods be affordable without understanding the processthat went into the manufacture and processing of what we are buying. We do notconcern ourselves with who gets paid how much, and how much of their laboractually went into what we are buying because we assume it is too 'complex' forus to understand. We allow our corporations to put us into billions of dollarsof debt and then we pay for them to stay in business after gambling away ourmoney, our labor, our investments and creating exotic financial instrumentsthat have sucked away all actual value and replaced it with an I.O.U that canNEVER be repaid.
We allow corporations andinstitutions to bid against each other using our labor and our money, and we pay for their losses while they keep all of the winnings. We are NOT victims ofsome complex scheme beyond our comprehension or skill, but victims of our fearof responsibility. We have allowed a monetary system of financialization totake over and distort ALL real value on earth - and we have allowed PROFIT tobecome the only thing that matters in this world even if it means we mustdestroy the environment, displace countless species of animals, disrupt theecosystem, poison our waters, keeps BILLIONS of people in poverty and economicsuffering - all because we accept the notion that we are not responsible orcapable of understanding or directing our own economic policies - all becausewe continue to use a value system based on financial instruments made out ofnothing - based on entirely fictional arrangements of value.
The earth, the resources that arehere, and the many lives that are currently sharing in this ONE physicalreality CANNOT be created out of thin air, cannot be repackaged and revaluedand resold countless times, cannot be "bailed out" when the inherentvalue of LIFE has been expended - and yet we allow ALL of this to happenbecause our financial systems deem it necessary for "profit", because"profit" can only come from confusion, chaos, displacement, andexploitation - because that is where money derives its value.
But through the very same method bywhich our economic system has become corrupt and untrustworthy - we are able toestablish a new system - a new agreement and understanding - and a new"financial instrument" that will be the pinnacle achievement of ourspecies if we dare to do the simplest thing - if we simply would agree thatLIFE has a real value and that our financial systems should align itself toREAL value, and to ensure that all people and all life are properly consideredin this value system.
This is why it is of great importancefor all to study and become educated in terms of how these world systems work -because in our absence there has been great abuse and atrocity committed to adegree that now threatens the stability of the world.
It is a matter of urgencythat an Equal MoneyCapitalism be understood and implemented while there is stillsufficient time, and that we the rightful political majority of this worldorganize and democratically begin to shift our value systems away from falseconcoctions designed only for the profit of the financial elite, and back to avalue system that reflects the dignity, honor, and equal right to life and resourcethat is inherent in all through an Equal Life Foundation - so that we have a world WORTHY of the children wewill bring into this world - so that we can be proud and confident inintroducing our future children to the world that they will inherit - the worldthat is our gift and our legacy that will live on through our futuregenerations who will enter a world fully cared for, fully supported in the bestpossible way, fully enabled and educated to be responsible and equal within allthings, so that this legacy becomes the birthright and thus responsibility ofall that will follow. THAT is a world worth living in, and worth fighting fornow - because this is the ONLY place where such a world can come into being,and this world will not survive the corruption of financialization without theintervention of the awakened political majority of REAL Politicians.
