The Financial Elite's War Against the US Econ

[jugoso]

Today’s economic warfare is not the kind waged a century ago between labor and its industrial employers. Finance has moved to capture the economy at large, industry and mining, public infrastructure (via privatization) and now even the educational system. (At over $1 trillion, U.S. student loan debt came to exceed credit-card debt in 2012.) The weapon in this financial warfare is no larger military force. The tactic is to load economies (governments, companies and families) with debt, siphon off their income as debt service and then foreclose when debtors lack the means to pay. Indebting government gives creditors a lever to pry away land, public infrastructure and other property in the public domain. Indebting companies enables creditors to seize employee pension savings. And indebting labor means that it no longer is necessary to hire strikebreakers to attack union organizers and strikers.

Workers have become so deeply indebted on their home mortgages, credit cards and other bank debt that they fear to strike or even to complain about working conditions. Losing work means missing payments on their monthly bills, enabling banks to jack up interest rates to levels that used to be deemed usurious. So debt peonage and unemployment loom on top of the wage slavery that was the main focus of class warfare a century ago. And to cap matters, credit-card bank lobbyists have rewritten the bankruptcy laws to curtail debtor rights, and the referees appointed to adjudicate disputes brought by debtors and consumers are suject to veto from the banks and businesses that are mainly responsible for inflicting injury.

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/12/michael-hudson-americas-deceptive-2012-fiscal-cliff-part-ii-the-financial-war-against-the-economy-at-large.html#Ouz723EakWPLj6My.99

[Ashotep]

Banksters and big business are running the country into the ground and its happening all over the world. Stop bailing them out directly and give the money to the people to buy a new car or pay off the debt. That way the bank/business gets help and so does the person in debt.