Monday, May 21, 2012

Recovery or Callapse? Bet on Collapse by Paul Craig Roberts The US financial system and, probably........

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Reader Ed: Recovery or Callapse? Bet on Collapse by Paul Craig Roberts The US financial system and, probably........
Posted By: Steve [Send E-Mail]
Date: Monday, 21-May-2012 12:19:33

Recovery or Callapse? Bet on Collapse
by Paul Craig Roberts
The US financial system and, probably, the financial system of Europe, like the police, no longer serves a useful social purpose.
In the US the police have proven themselves to be a greater threat to public safety than private sector criminals. I just googled “police brutality” and up came 183,000,000 results. (Here are two recent brutal assaults, one deadly, by police on hapless individuals: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/kelly-thomas-video-dad-they-are-killing-me-.html and http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31364.htm )
The cost to society of the private financial system is even higher. Writing in CounterPunch (May 18), Rob Urie reports that two years ago Andrew Haldane, executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England (the UK’s version of the Federal Reserve) said that the financial crisis, now four years old, will in the end cost the world economy between $60 trillion and $200 trillion in lost GDP. If Urie’s report is correct, this is an astonishing admission from a member of the ruling elite. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/18/the-true-costs-of-bank-crises/print
Try to get your mind around these figures. The US GDP, the largest in the world, is about 15 trillion. What Haldane is telling us is that the financial crisis will end up costing the world lost real income between 4 and 13 times the size of the current Gross Domestic Product of the United States. This could turn out to be an optimistic forecast.
In the end, the financial crisis could destroy Western civilization.
Even if Urie’s report, or Haldane’s calculation, is incorrect, the obvious large economic loss from the financial crisis is still unprecedented. The enormous cost of the financial crisis has one single source–financial deregulation. Financial deregulation is likely to prove to be the mistake that destroys Western civilization. While we quake in our boots from fear of “Muslim terrorists,” it is financial deregulation that is destroying us, with help from jobs offshoring. Keep in mind that Haldane is a member of the ruling elite, not a critic of the system like myself, Gerald Celente, Michael Hudson, Pam Martins, and Nomi Prins. (This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of critics.)
Financial deregulation has had dangerous and adverse consequences. Deregulation permitted financial concentration that produced “banks too big to fail,” thus requiring the general public to absorb the costs of the banks’ mistakes and reckless gambling.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The banks basically told the people that we needed them and that they would loan us money to help our business, etc. Then after they took all the money from America's Treasury, they did nothing to help out Americans. Aren't the American's getting fed up with all the lies and cons that have been pulled on them? Like enough already! They've just been trying to take our money and destroy our economic base to rule over us. Time to turn the tide.

Anonymous said...

Let's not let "financial deregulation" take the blame for what is actually the result of greed and moral depravity, plain and simple.