Economic, financial and regulatory issues should dominate politics and government in the United States for the next two or three years, which is important enough. National discourse may also have a new and deserving bogeyman. Franklin D. Roosevelt had Big Business, Ronald Reagan had Big Labor, and my guess is that the new president inaugurated next January will have Big Finance.
True, finance has been whupped by presidents before. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, for example. But that was in the quill-pen era when the financial sector was a pup. Today's financial services sector, by contrast, is a grasping, gargantuan combination of banks, stockbrokers, insurancemen, loan sharks, credit-card issuers, hedge fund speculators, securitization mavens and mortgage operators. Over the last five years, financial services has reached a swollen 20-21% of U.S. GDP -- the largest sector of the private economy.
Manufacturing led financial services by 2:1 back in the 1970s, but by 2006 beaten goods production had shrunk to just 12% of GDP.
Do most Americans understand this? Of course not. Newspaper front pages have shunned any discussion; 60 Minutes has not even spared the transformation sixty seconds, despite its vast implications. This upheaval is probably "the greatest story never told" about the two decades between, say, 1986 and 2006.
Nor was it an economic accident. Computerization was a prequisite, as was the rise of financial mathematics. However, I would say that the two most important underpinnings of financialization lay in the rise of public and private debt as a mainstay of American culture and economics and the perpetual liquidity and bail-out support of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan. During Greenspan's 1987-2005 tenure, the sum of public and private debt in the United States quadrupled from just over $10 trillion to $43 trillion. Finance became the industry that was not allowed to fail but was permitted to enlarge and metastasize its behavior almost at will. Regulation was minimal. Favoritism was omnipresent.
The result, alas, has been all over recent headlines. America's biggest ever housing bubble, with 57 varieties of exotic mortgages and home prices now plummeting at rates unseen since the 1930s. The United States turned Credit Card Nation, with a citzenry in thrall to plastic, 20% interest rates and late fees for just about everything. Huge banks like Citigroup feel no shame in paying billion-dollar fines for colluding with Enron's tax and accounting deceits. And since mid-2007, national and world credit markets have been panicked and paralyzed by hitherto obscure instruments -- the stand-outs are collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) -- that not even their designers and packagers can explain.
Adolescent versions of Frankenstein finance became a crash and a disaster for Americans in 1929 when the industry was new and represented only 10-15% of the economic weight of American manufacturing. Now, by contrast, the unraveling of a second financial sector-turned casino involves literally the biggest force in the American economy. Who knows how much of this hubris and malfeasance is going to unwind unpleasantly or how long that will take?
In fact, phony Washington statistics and warped market measurements make it doubly hard to tell. The federal Consumer Price Index is already regarded by many Americans as a con job, and the press periodically quotes investors who state their belief that current U.S. inflation is really 6 to 9 percent a year, not the 2-4 percent the government alleges. I agree. On top of which, because the value of the dollar has dropped so far, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the end of March was not really 12,200, a number barely up from its 11,700 peak in 2000. If you measure the Dow in Swiss francs or euros, two strong currencies, it has already lost some forty percent of its 2000 value. Too many Americans live in a dream-world of economic misinformation.
I began writing about these matters with a 1990 book entitled The Politics of Rich and Poor, and in several other volumes since then. Today, the economic negligence of Washington and Wall Street, more than two decades in the making, has led to a multi-dimensional crisis in which this country faces an unprecedented convergence of problems: unprecedented debt, tumbling home prices, reckless money supply expansion, growing inflation, insufficient and expensive oil, and an eroding dollar. Sadly, there may no longer be a plausible way out.
Kevin Phillips' new book, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, is being published in April by Viking.
We can talk about our idealistic country should be, but until we all understand more about economics we will not be able to make the best decision for our president, senators or local politicians.
As you point out, most American fortunes - and all huge fortunes - were built in CLOSE COOPERATION with the top levels of the US government - from Revolutionary blockade runners to the slave trade to rail-roads and Civil War Industry
Heck even Thomas Jefferson's greatest accomplishment as president, the Louisiana Purchase, was entirely dependent on Alexander Hamilton paying off the nation's Revolutionary War debt, and giving Jefferson the credit and revenue he required to pay Napoleon for our bloodless victory. (Ironic that Jefferson's great accomplishment the product of his rival's elitist financial philosophy.)
WHICH IS EXACTLY THE POINT: OF course, shortly after the successful conclusion of the Revolution, President Washington marched the Army to western border of Penn. to suppress (and hang) the Whiskey Rebellion - asserting the principle of the government TO TAX the public was of greater importance than the "freedom" of public citizens from taxation, or even corrupt local officials and judges. (The legitimate greivances of the rebels led Washington to pardon them from hanging, but the taxes and ruthless officials remained.)
From Economic Hit Men descending on South American cities to "privatize" water plants and triple their rates to local consumers, to George W. Bush jumping on the Ethanol bandwagon - making food prices skyrocket as the ag commodity becomes another oil/energy commodity - no matter how efficiently and above-board the economy and government could be run, we still will be fighting - with millions of new auto consumers in China, India, Africa, and elsewhere - for an ever shrinking pool of oil.
Dick Cheney just makes piracy (of foreign and within US natural assets and treasury funds) an open and overt national goal of the oligopoly.
I'd say the "bigs" he had was Big Military (see the rise in defense spending and deficits during his first term) and Big Oil (remember Interior Secretary James Watt?)
FDR took on (and ultimately saved) Business with the New Deal which created the middle class, Reagan began the dismantling this middle class with the breakup of the air traffic controllers strike, and the eventual deindustrialization and de-laborization of America -- which set it up for Big Finance, and Kevin's point is that the next prez will have to take on Big Finance to restructure our way of governing ourselves.
However, I think that's a tall order. I think that these guys have so taken over our government, economy, and our national psyche (our wants and desires, as well as our economic dependency in retirement -- through pension funds and 401ks) that these fuckers will be screwing us for decades to come.
Big money has gotten good at modulating the boom and bust, that they manufacture booms, which causes a severe crash - which clears out the slate (of mostly working and middle class Americans who are always the last to get in, and last to get out, so are left holding the bag), and they start again.
Right now we're clearing out another generation from the slate, who's dreams and aspirations are destroyed. The next generation of PT Barnum's suckers every minute are anxiously waiting in the wings. Some of these will win -- most will not.
And
it's no surprise that even two Democrats who made it thus far both represent the elite business lawyers class.
Both are entirely dedicated to the dominance of financial sector, despite some vox populi pretensions.
It is no surprise that candidates who opposed this dominance did NOT make it!
Obama voted to let credit card companies charge UNLIMITED interest rates and was promptly rewarded. He's a corporate lawyer. His wife is a corporate lawyer. They made millions of dollars off corporate teat.
Clintons supported ( although half-heartedly) global trade agreements benefiting mostly multi- nationals and Wall street.
The circle jerk: business- politics-business goes on...
Roman Senate circa Caligula appear bold by comparison.
We need to remove excessive incentives for certain financical services such as for mortgage brokers to discourage bad loans.
We need to rereglate banking to discourage mega-mergers, allowing more local and regional banks instead of most banking in large national banks like BoA. More competition would mean higher interest rates for deposits, lower interest rates in borrowings and lower fees to consumers.
We need to properly regulate the credit card industry, requiring lenders to not over extend credit, cap fees and when applied, cap interest rates and how they are set, as well as reduce the constant filling of mailboxes with applications and 'plain english' language in any agreements.
We need to go back to the former Bankruptcy laws to allow more to use the law without the current problems that one cannot get out of certain debt.
We need to reform our income tax and corporate tax laws to end the AMT but replace with caps on tax-free income, limit primary home interest and local tax deductions, higher rates for very high salaries (over $200,000) and to discourage profiteering on stocks, commodities and real property.
You are correct, as usual. I have come to regard your analysis of what's REALLY going on in government as true and reliable, as everything you have pedicted or projected has come to pass.
I hope that you are among the first persons selected to serve as an advisor to Pres. Obama, or maybe even a higher post, cabinet-level or something.
You have great wisdom for a Republican. You are a true patriot. Thank you.
...uh.... revolution, maybe?
Who is the enemy we're fighting? Clearly the enemy are speculators who have taken over and re-engineered the financial system in America - to cover their losses if they lose - and shield them from taxes if they win.
The losers in this war are the savers (and workers). People who live on retirement incomes for example, or anyone who has prudently been saving money knows they are getting hit with financial shrapnel in the form of pitifully low returns on their savings - thanks to low interest rates - driven low by mis-statements of inflation numbers by the gov't (working in tandem with Big Finance) as Mr. Phillips points out in his blog.
CPI numbers are kept artificially low for a variety of reasons; one important reason - retiree payouts are tied to the CPI. Keeping (stated) CPI low means the gov't pays out less. If the real inflation rates were published social security payouts would jump substantially (less money for war?).
It's our money, we had it deducted from our paychecks with the promise that we would get it back later. The gov'ts mistatements regarding CPI amounts to social larceny of the common wealth.
Watch this 12 minute film; "Savers Versus Speculators"
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qxYi2W9vEfw
The Chinese are building wealth. The United States is spending its wealth.
But it's important attempt to turn away American economy from the consumer model back to producing model.
Multi corps are not interested in that but neither are most American consumers.
Would YOU agree if the interest rates go up to 30%?
The three branches of our government were created to help prevent concentration of power. The designers of our government could not have foreseen the rise of corporations whose size and wealth would dominate all branches through lobbying, campaign funding and control of the public dialogue through a mass media. In 1776, information and thus influence was distributed, literally, by horsepower. Now a sound bite can flash across the globe in a matter of minutes, and content of that message is, more often than not, a product of corporate calculation.
Corporations, by the vast wealth they wield, have truly become a fourth branch of government, responsible only to themselves. The threat this poses to our system of government is dire. The freedom of speech is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the wealthy. And this branch of government operates in its interest alone and with seemingly little regard for the public or even the future of the nation.
One of the main objectives of warfare is to disrupt and destabilize the economy of the opponent. So, when wealth pursues interests exclusive of the interest of the nation, it is in effect waging war on the United States.
Now is the time to consider that this fourth branch of government should be brought to heel, because it is not representative of and often acts against the interest of the public.
Another excellent post. Thank you.