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Rushing Like Lemmings Toward the Abyss: The Destructive Power of the Financial Markets


 
In Der Spiegel’s fascinating long, four-part report, “The Destructive Power of the Financial Markets,” the situation of advanced capitalism is summed-up (appropriately) in the starkest terms, with predatory hedge fund managers and the financial elites identified as the “bad guys” in the opening paragraphs:

The enemy looks friendly and unpretentious. With his scuffed shoes and thinning gray hair, John Taylor resembles an elderly sociology professor. Books line the dark, floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves in his office in Manhattan, alongside a bust of Theodore Roosevelt and an antique telescope.

Taylor is the chairman and CEO of FX Concepts, a hedge fund that specializes in currency speculation. It’s the largest hedge fund of its kind worldwide, which is why Taylor is held partly responsible for the crash of the euro. Critics accuse Taylor and others like him of having exacerbated the government crisis in Greece and accelerated the collapse in Ireland.

People like Taylor are “like a pack of wolves” that seeks to tear entire countries to pieces, said Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg. For that reason, they should be fought “without mercy,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy raged. Andrew Cuomo, the former attorney general and current governor of New York, once likened short-sellers to “looters after a hurricane.”

The German tabloid newspaper Bild sharply criticized Taylor on its website, writing: “This man is betting against the euro.” If that is what he is doing, he is certainly successful. While Greece is threatened with bankruptcy, Taylor is listed among the world’s 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers.

A well-read man, Taylor likes to philosophize about the Congress of Vienna and the Treaties of Rome. But is this man really out to speculate the euro to death? And does he have Greece on his conscience?

Taylor grimaces and sighs. He was expecting these questions. “The big problem is that in some cases these politicians are looking for the easy way out and want to blame somebody else and say speculators are taking Europe apart, taking the euro down and ruining the prosperity of our country,” he says, characterizing such charges against hedge fund managers as “nonsense.” “My capital isn’t the capital of the Rothschilds,” he says, insisting that he is working with the “capital of the people,” and that his goal is to protect and increase this capital. Taylor points out that no one from any of the German pension funds that invest their money with him has ever called him on the phone to tell him not to bet against the euro.

We’ve heard that one before. If bankers and hedge fund managers aren’t to be held culpable for the mess in the world’s financial markets, as they tell us over and over again, then WHO IS responsible? I’m not. Are You? All this bullshit about “market forces,” etc. If I’m not mistaken—and I’m not—the people who make these decisions that affect the rest of our lives have names and street addresses. They could have been, and should have been, brought to justice, but Obama was too damned timid to try. What’s stopping the rest of the world?

This series makes some extremely compelling arguments about what can be done to curb the financial markets, and why their power should be curbed. How fucked up is it that we’re all held hostage to this evil Leviathan that fucks most of mankind over while handsomely rewarding the greedy and immoral for their greed and abject immorality??? If the source of the destruction and turmoil can be identified—and surely it can be—then why is it allowed to continue?

The Republicans would like us to believe that the wealthy are “job creators.” Read this and tell me how this could possibly be the case. The “job creators” myth is becoming revealed as the most threadbare “big lie” in the GOP’s rather impressive repertoire of falsehoods…. What a decadent society we live in. It’s enough to make you want to puke.

Part 1: The Destructive Power of the Financial Markets
Part 2: ‘The Inability of Economists to Correctly Interpret the World’
Part 3: Rushing Like Lemmings Toward the Abyss
Part 4: Nothing More than Piecemeal Regulations

 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.06.2011
01:16 pm
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