>The more you borrow, the more power you have over the creditors.
>The saying: it's not how much you own; it is how much you owe that give
>you >power over the bank is very operative.
I believe Rupert Murdoch responded to a journalist's questions about NewsCorps multi-billion dollar black hole in 1990 with a gentle smile: "I'm not in trouble; my bankers are." Either they renegotiated his loans, indeed tided him over with an extra few bob, or they went down the S-bend themselves. So they did. And now 'everyone's' happy.
>Under financial capitalism, unlike during industrial capitalism,
>capitalists don't
>even own the capital they control. The line between debt and equity has
>become
>very blurred economically. It is now only a legal/accounting distinction.
Long Term Capital, eh?
>What is needed is an institution to represent the collective power of small
>borrowers and involuntary investors against these usurping intermediary
>institutions.
Bankruptcy has its possibilities, thus our betters are on to it - all to defend poor Jo Citizen from his/her own impetuous irresponsibility, of course.
And we're all involuntary investors, eh? I look at my gorgeous little 'uns in the morning and ask myself, do I really want this irrational and obscene social order to collapse today - what, with all the break-downs in infrastructure, famine, displacement, violence that might attend such an upheaval? And if tomorrow, won't my gorgeous little 'uns have gorgeous little 'uns then?
Yet somehow I don't find it at all consoling that the left is but a fart in this whirlwind of irrational obscenities.
After all, whether one admits to a stake in today's order or not, this order seems embarked on tumultuous, possibly revolutionary, transition. Profound transformations happen, it seems, whether the left is ready to take a hand or not.
And it seems to me we're not.
The worst of both worlds, eh?
Ooh, I've come over all queezy - mebbe a Prozac sandwich is the go ...
Yours maudlin, Rob.