Author: jameswagner

The people who run Capitalism, that is. Not happy at all, I’m sure.
Today, first the NYDaily News with a dramatic front page graphic and the headline, “BUSTED TRUST, Wall St. scandals spooking big, small investors,” then the NYTimes Week in Review banner headline, “CLAY FEET, Could Capitalists Actually Bring Down Capitalism?,” at the top of a somewhat less pessimistic but no less smashing description of what’s going on. And these are not lefty journals. These is The Establishment.
Now I know I shouldn’t necessarily be gleeful at the possible or impending sudden disappearance of or depressive shift in the cycle of this “system”, since it would mean havoc perhaps even exceeding the evil it does now. Moreover, as someone living on a fixed income produced by, no, not the sweat of my brow, but by years of borrrre-dom, I should have a selfish interest at stake. And in the end, we know the ones who will suffer regardless of how this all works out will not be the very rich. BUT, I will admit I’m absolutely fascinated by what’s happening right now.

To those inured to corporate wrongdoing � perhaps by the insider trading scandals or the savings and loan debacle of recent decades � the latest scourge of white-collar malfeasance might seem like more of the same, with greedy executives cutting corners to make a profit. But in truth, the corporate calamities of the new millennium are of a different ilk, one that challenges the credibility of the financial reporting system, and in turn the faith of investors in the capital markets � the very engine that has driven capitalism to its success.

It used to be you trusted either biz’nez or the guv’ment.
Since the powers of each have dispensed with the fiction that the two were separate, it will now be very hard to look up to either, whether your primary allegiance is to liberal politics or capitalist economics.
Americans gave up on regarding government as a force for good long ago, but lately even the monied classes have lost faith in institutions which handle money.
You mean they actually do teach “responsible business practices and organizational ethics” to businesspeople? We’re told that’s the subject of Barbara Toffler’s teaching at Columbia Business School, but the classes must have been very small indeed.
She worries now about what will bring investors back to a market whose image has been shattered in recent months. She says the ethics problem is “systemic and intractable.”

“And we’re not going to be able to get out of this crisis of credibility and concern about who can we trust, because nobody really wants to break up the nice, neat little ring of conflicts of interest that go from the corporate world to the streets of Wall Street to the political suites of our government,” Hoffman said.

Doesn’t sound good for the home team.

Terrorists dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities at the end of the Second World War.
Why, to save money and/or avoid risking American soldier’s lives? But few today believe Japan was not about to surrender anyway, The agument was apparently specious even then, for “In 1946 the US strategic bombing survey came to the conclusion that ‘Japan would have surrendered even if atomic bombs had not been dropped’.”

[In the summerof 1945] Sixty-six of Japan’s largest cities had been burned down by napalm bombing. In Tokyo a million civilians were homeless and 100,000 people had died. They had been, according to Major General Curtis Lemay, who was in charge of the fire bombing operations, “scorched and boiled and baked to death”. President Franklin Roosevelt’s son and confidant said that the bombing should continue “until we have destroyed about half the Japanese civilian population.” On July 18 the Japanese emperor telegraphed President Truman, who had succeeded Roosevelt, and once again asked for peace. The message was ignored.
A few days before the bombing of Hiroshima, Vice Admiral Radford boasted that “Japan will eventually be a nation without cities – a nomadic people”. The bomb, exploding above a hospital in the center of the city, killed 100,000 people instantly, 95% of them civilians. Another 100,000 died slowly from burns and effects of radiation.

Dresden could be invoked here as well, but additional examples aren’t needed to give us enough of the historical perspective we ignore now at such risk.
Incredibly today we are told that only desperate individuals and the insurrections of which they may be a part can be terrorists, and that nations, at least the good guys, those that aren’t “rogue,” cannot.