Paul Craig Roberts: "Economics in Freefall"

[Smaland]

Another of (economist Joseph E.) Stiglitz’s shortcomings, one that he shares with most economists, is his habit of reifying the market economy. The market is a social organization. The results of market activity reflect the behavior of the human participants in the market. When economists reify the market, they attribute the behavior, ethics, and morality—or lack thereof—of humans to the market itself. Thus, Stiglitz describes human failures as "market failures," and he asks in his new book, Freefall, "why didn’t the market exercise discipline on bad corporate governance and bad incentive structures?"

Full article (http://www.vdare.com/roberts/100714_economics.htm)

[RoyBatty]

I'm afraid that the entire system has become corrupted from the top to the bottom. At the top you have the political classes who are more or less born into it (right schools, right social status etc) combined with an assortment of manufactured leaders (from less privileged backgrounds) who together dominate the political spectrum.

Behind both and controlling the major political parties are the hidden powers, ie MONEY. This comprises of a list of Corporations, Banks, Mega-Wealthy individuals, Media Owners and Controllers etc.

The general public are the cash and votes cattle who feed and sustain the aforementioned groups.

The markets.... oh well, by now it should be fairly clear that these are:

- rigged
- controlled by criminals
- controlled by reckless gamblers who are accountable to no-one and whose actions
usually remain unpunished
- dominated by people who will use them in order to launch economic raids on countries (including their "own" countries) in order to transfer wealth to themselves
- the amount of "wealth" in the banks and markets is artificial and based on paper as opposed to real assets. The "value" of money has become arbitrary.

In this mega corrupt system those on the inside become spectacularly wealthy, countries economies are wrecked, countries social systems and demographics are wrecked, the middle classes are tasked with paying / slaving for this system, the poor are placated through handouts to support this system.