Capitalism on Crack

The Market God is feeling a bit wrathful these days. Not only are the hypercapitalists beginning to O.D. on their greed drug, their stash itself is so full to bursting that the hidden hoards in Switzerland actually took on a life of their own, so to speak. It turns out that just holding on to all that excess finance got to be too much, and the Swiss National Bank decided to both un-peg the franc from the Euro and also to charge depositors a fee -- an interest rate of minus 0.75% -- to guard the hidden stashes, mostly ill-gotten gained since the meltdown of 2008. It is getting too expensive to be the bag man for the oligarchs. Serving the oligarchs was beginning to hurt Swiss manufacturing, making its own products too costly for the rest of the world to afford. This is despite previous efforts of Swiss financiers to reduce the value of the franc in an effort to normalize the greed-spawned abnormal, winner-take-all state of affairs.

Some VIPs, along with the subsidized banking cartels, are losing money in the currency betting game as a result. That's the thing about pathological greed. When the game is rigged to such a criminal extent, the whole House can come crashing down -- as in a house of cards. But guess who gets handed the IOU?

Not even smart economists like Paul Krugman know exactly what's going on with Switzerland, and how it will affect you and me, but he thinks we should probably be very afraid, given the current reactionary and misanthropic makeup of our own government. He didn't actually use the word "corrupt," but he should have. The greed drug not only makes you stupid, it makes you even greedier. And the capitalist crackheads are not operating in a vacuum. It's no coincidence that increasing income disparity accompanies the rising tide of fascism and xenophobia both in Europe and America, which in turn accompanies this recent market "volatility."

As I've written about before, the ongoing police brutality we're seeing has to be viewed within a larger context. The media are relying on Police Shooting of the Week narratives instead of looking at the bigger picture. One of the latest incidents took place in Billings, Montana, where just one 20-something cop has already taken out two people in his very short career.

 To New York Times columnist Charles Blow's credit, when recounting the incident in a recent column he allowed that the issue of deadly police force is a complex one. However, he mentioned only in passing that both shooting victims were high on crystal meth at the time they were killed by Officer Grant Morrison. As I wrote in my response,

Being high on meth is being armed and dangerous. Quadruple the paranoia and the aggression and the typical jerky movements of a meth-head -- within a confined space -- and you can empathize with this officer. It's really not fair to say that he "punished" the victim without also being able to see the behavior that was going on inside that vehicle.

There's a huge meth problem in Billings, which no doubt exacerbated the cop's hair trigger mentality. That his other victim was also high on meth is probably no coincidence. The whole area is a boom town, flush with cash from the Bakken oil fields. The drug is a popular, powerful stimulant in high demand by the truckers and field workers to help them stay awake. Police say that the crystal meth hitting Billings is 95% pure.

So while it's right to protest against police violence, this violence is only part of our larger sick and violent society. The meth comes from Mexican drug cartels, whose funds are laundered by American banks. As we know, not one bankster has gone to jail for crimes against humanity. And then there are the guns, trafficked here there and everywhere with the full collusion of our elected officials.

That the USA, wealth disparity capital and largest arms dealer on the planet, either cannot or will not control the lucrative weapons and drug industries should come as no surprise.

 Cops, therefore, are both reflection and collateral damage of the corrupt political and economic system that employs them.

Meth, though it's been around a long time, is very much a growing part of the New Abnormal Economy. The popular dystopian TV show "Breaking Bad" is very much based on reality. The anti-hero originally got into the drug trade and a life of crime because he needed cash to treat his cancer. His insurance didn't "cover" his treatment. Like a corrupt financial institution unto himself, his big headache became not only the manufacturing, but where and how the hell to launder, stash and hide all those piles of money.

Capitalism on Crack, Money on Meth: it's both literal and figurative.

Here's my comment on today's Paul Krugman column:

Hoarding isn't just unhealthy for the hoarders, it's making the whole global neighborhood sick unto death.

We should follow Piketty's advice and institute a global wealth tax to help the Swiss. Barring that unlikelihood, we might follow Elizabeth Warren's advice and just break up the banks.

Unfortunately, the possessors of wisdom and the owners of obscene wealth live in different universes.

The capitalist malefactors are, of course, hysterical over the market volatility and even the feeblest belated efforts to rein them in. Their response to economic turmoil has been put their legalized bribery into overdrive as they drill the already toothless Dodd-Frank law into a gaping maw of uselessness.

As if that were not enough, leaked clauses in the top secret corporate coups known as "trade" deals reveal that the multinationals aim to destroy regulations in European (TTIP) and Pacific (TPP) countries as well.

It's capitalism on crack. And as the crash from the latest orgy of unbridled excess looms, all we can do is brace ourselves, and wish that instead of listening to Jamie Dimon whine, we could be watching him and his pals do a perp walk.

"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." - FDR.

(Credit: Radical Art Initiative)