We, the People, call Charles Ferguson to testify on the Predator Nation, how corporate criminals, political corruption, and the hijacking of America have led to 202x. Mr. Ferguson is also the diretor of the Academy Award-winning film, “Inside Job.”
Ferguson: ”Over the last several decades, the United states has undergone one of the most radical social and economic transformations in its history. Finance has become America’s dominant industry, while manufacturing, even for high technology industries, has nearly disappeared. The financial sector has become increasingly corrupt, with the widespread fraud that caused the housing bubble going completely unpunished. Federal tax collections as a share of GDP are at their lowest level in sixty years, with the wealthy and highly profitable corporations enjoying the greatest tax reductions. Most shocking, the United states, so long the beacon of opportunity for the ambitious poor, has become one of the world’s most unequal and unfair societies.”
Ferguson: “..there is now abundant evidence of widespread, unpunished criminal behavior in the financial sector…major U.S. and European banks have been caught assisting corporate fraud by Enron and others, laundering money for drug cartels and..Iranian military, aiding tax evasion, hiding..assets of corrupt dictators, colluding in order to fix prices, and committing many forms of financial fraud.”
Ferguson: ”The evidence is now overwhelming that over the last thiry years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry. As its wealth and power grew, it subverted America’s political system.. government, and academic institutions in order to free itself from regulation. As deregulation progressed, the industry became ever more unethical and dangerous, producing ever larger financial crises and ever more blatant criminality. Since the 1990s, its power has been sufficient to insulate bankers not only from effective regulation but even from criminal law enforcement.”
Ferguson: ”The financial sector is now a parasitic and destabilizing industry that constitutes a major drag on American economic growth.”…
Ferguson: ”If financial executives know..they will go to jail if they commit major frauds that endanger the world economy, and..their illegal wealth will be confiscated..they will be considerably less likely to commit such frauds and cause global financial crises.”..
Ferguson: ”..the rise of predatory finance is both a cause and a symptom of an even broader, and even more disturbing, change in America’s economy and political system. The financial sector is the core of a new oligarchy that has risen to power over the past thirty years, and that has profoundly changed American life.”..
Ferguson: ”Starting around 1980, American society began to undergo a series of deep shifts. Deregulation, weakened antitrust enforcement, and technological changes led to an increasing concentration of industry and finance. Money began to play a larger and corrupting role in politics. America fell behind other nations in education, in infrastructure, and in ..performance of many of its major industries. Inequality increased…America was turning into a rigged game – a society that denies opportunity to those who are not born into wealthy families, one that resembles a third-world dictatorship more than an advanced democracy.”..
Ferguson: ”..over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy..”
Ferguson: ”..the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful..industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, ..the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry,”
Ferguson: ””If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.”
Ferguson: ”..having squandered trillions on mismanaged wars, tax cuts designed especially for the rich, a gigantic real estate bubble, and massive bailouts for its banks, the United States is confronting major fiscal problems..”..
”The principle reason for this is..politically powerful interest groups have been able to block reform…both political parties are ignoring, lying about, and/or exploiting the country’s very real economic, social, and educational problems. this process is starting to generate an additional danger: demagoguery. As America deteriorates, religious and political extremists are beginning to exploit..growing insecurity and discontent..this has principally taken the form of attacks on federal government, taxes, and social spending..sometimes..taking more extreme forms: antiscientific fundamentalist Christianity; attacks on education, the teaching of evolution, vaccines, and scientific activity; and demonization of various groups such as immigrants, Muslims, and the poor..”
Ferguson: ”Over the past quarter century, the leaders of both political parties have perfected a remarkable system of remaining in power while serving America’s new oligarchy. Both parties take in huge amounts of money, in many forms – campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving-door hiring, favors, and special access of various kinds….both parties..mobilize support because they skillfully exploit America’s cultural polarization. Republicans warn social conservatives about..dangers of secularism, taxes, abortion, welfare, gay marriage, gun control, and liberals. Democrats warn social liberals about..dangers of guns, pollution, global warming, making abortions illegal, and conservatives.”..
Ferguson: ”The vast income accumulated by the narrow slice of super-elite at the top of the wealth pyramid has created a kind of global “canopy economy”. that has lost its connections to nations and people they sprang from. At the very tp, the most senior executives, rainmakers, and traders at global banks and corporations routinely pull down eight-figure pay packages. These are people with four or five mansions around the world, yachts, private jet services anywhere at any time, limousines, servants, access, power.”..
The economic impact of this inequality is now astonishingly high. The wealth and power of America’s new elite is both a clue to and a cause of America’s tepid recovery from the financial crash. Companies are wallowing in cash, but Average Americans don’t have money to spend. Labor productivity has improved dramatically; growing by an almost unheard-of 5.4% in 2009.”..
Ferguson: ”..average wages ..[are].. declining..[because].. educations and skills of..American[s] are losing two races – one with technological progress, and another with.. skill levels of workers in other, lower-wage nations. Education is the critical variable here. In the Internet age, America can be a high-income, full-employment nation only if its workforce has education and skills superior to those available in India, China, and elsewhere at far lower wages..Americans with master’s degrees in computer science from Stanford or MIT still do very well. But most Americans can’t participate in the high-technology economy because most of America’s educational system is a mess. High school and college graduation rates are vastly inadequate…high school in America is a joke compared with high school in South Korea or Taiwan.”
Ferguson: ”But another huge reason for..decline of the American economy, and of average American wages, is the shifting balance of power between America’s new oligarchy..federal government, and the rest of the population. Investment decisions, wage rates, and government policies are determined largely by people in the canopy economy. This has two very deep consequences.. “
”The first is..well-run, successful American companies are investing, but not in people, and not in the United States. Ceos see far better opportunities in purchasing information technology systems and in using inexpensive overseas labor.”..
Ferguson: ”.America’s new elite has obtained much of its extreme wealth not through superior productivity, but mainly via forced transfers from the rest of American, and world, population. These transfers were frequently unethical or even criminal, and were enormously aided by government policies that reduced taxes on the rich, allowed industrial consolidation through lax antitrust enforcement, protected inefficient firms, impeded protests from unions, kept worker’s wages low, permitted massive financial sector frauds, bailed out the financial sector when it collapsed, and shielded corporate crime from law enforcement action. Those government policies were, with varying degrees of subtlety, bought and paid for by their beneficiaries. “
Ferguson: ”In this process, one industry stands above all others: financial services. In no other industry has the amorality, destructiveness, and greed of the new elite been so naked. Much of the new wealth of the U.S. financial sector was acquired the old-fashioned way – by stealing it. With each step in the process of deregulation and consolidation, American finance gradually became a quasi-criminal industry, whose behavior eventually produced a gigantic global Ponzi scheme – the financial bubble that caused the crisis of 2008. It was, literally, the crime of the century, one whose effects will continue to plague the world for many years..”
Note: please remember terms used here: ”quasi-criminal,” parasitic drag on the economy, ”a rogue industry,” ”the core of a new oligarchy,” turning America into “a rigged game,” ”an amoral financial oligarchy,” global ‘canopy economy”. HOW can Ferguson say these things, in print? Why did his film, “Inside Job,” win an “Academy Award”??? Again – DO YOUR OWN, legitimate, mainstream research. Find the STATISTICAL basis for what Ferguson, and many others on this site have said: something very radical, very bad, very destructive to the bottom 90% of Americans after 1980. Those were were alive in the golden American middle class era of 1947-1973 are dying off – the WITNESSES to what was a global phenomenon: a deliberately planned sharing of a nation’s wealth among all of its people – not just the rich.
What Ferguson and many other truthful commentators are telling you is this: the middle class 1947-73 golden era was, IS, being DELIBERATELY DESTROYED. For one simple, very old human failing: GREED.
This can be stopped, reversed……BUT…… YOU. have to want to. Do YOU??? Tired of. YOUR. kids being screwed over by the greedy top 1% and their corporations??? Then , intelligently VOTE. Intelligently !!!!! Which political party has been against most reforms and laws that help YOU. since. 1933???? THEY. STILL. DO !!!ooo
With Justice For All 