Anyone care to poke holes in this very general analysis or answer the vague questions?
The demand from high finance all over the world seems to be: keep those money printing machines going at full throttle. And now, obama is hinting that bernanke will get the axe...It looks like the beast is gorging on essentially free money, consolidating wealth and power (mergers, takeovers, buyouts, policy writing, pumping up stocks and derivatives...) and meeting all over the world trying to hash out the most efficient way to rig the system to keep it all going.
The trade deals all seem to be - well, fascist is somehow an understatement...maybe, blueprints for massive transnational corporations to steal money from workers and control them at the same time? It's hard to come up with appropriate words for trade deals that would enable corporations to sue for profits for something they never did. I mean, it makes "barriers to trade" suits under the WTO look like kid's stuff. So, aside from a kind of de facto world-wide corporate fascism that is essentially state-less with unprecedented power and means of control, what happens when derivatives go blooey (isn't that inevitable?) and interest rates rise precipitously? Yes, next crisis - or...what..? With everything we know about capitalism, Kondritiev waves, etc., it seems like TINA...
Or, let me put it another way: It seems like the last crisis accomplished many many things:
1. Massive weakening of the the job market, enabling employers to pay less, further destroying worker rights, benefits, and wages. 2. Massive cuts in education budgets (well, all budgets actually - at least budgets that help working people). 3. Cuts in pensions in many nefarious ways - and that continues apace. The pressure on cutting is extreme and I fear a derivatives bubble popping could be (excuse me while i mix metaphors) the nail in the coffin. 4. Made assets cheap for the biggest players 5. Decimated housing for the little guy - of which the consequences are too myriad and profound to go into in a list - and created a huge pool of cheap real estate to buy up and hold/and or rent. 6. Created almost free money for the capitalists/investor class - whatever you want to call them...maybe, the financial elite...or maybe, our overlords is the most appropriate title. 7. Increased M&A - which is another way of saying wealth and power consolidation. I still don't think people are paying enough attention to this.
8. Record corporate profits 9. Zero effective legislation to stop it all from happening tomorrow.
Well, the list could go on and on...
The big boys created a crisis that was a huge windfall for them. Why wouldn't the big players want another round of death and destruction? Because they prefer stability? Come on...
My general take on things is that we've crossed the Rubicon on almost every level. It seems as if the turbo on the corporate juggernaut has kicked in, and we are in for an unprecedented number of bodies crushed under its wheels. At the moment it seems like about half of the u.s. is on it's knees and the other half is - well, let's be honest, it's being served by the people on their knees... In the meantime, the power elite go on their merry way. If we honestly look at what's left of the left, including occupy and well-meaning old lefties proposing worker owned cooperatives, we got nothin'. The path is clear for the juggernaut to roll on...