We tend to think of the capitalist economy the West lives in as the best way of doing things. It enables economic growth, gives us stuff to crave and buy, and generally serves to make us happy. Well, not so much the latter.
The thing is, capitalism has many, many problems. You’ll be reading a lot here about the various issues with capitalism, but today I’ll start with one problem inherent in the capitalist system that’s recently been painfully exposed for all to see: fraud.
The whole capitalist economy is built on fraud. Fraud is so pervasive in the western economic system that without it, the economy would quite literally collapse. It would fall apart utterly and irretrievably, coming down like the house of cards it really is.
This article, lengthy but worth every second you spend reading it, hammers it home: Confessions Of A Wall St. Nihilist: Forget About Goldman Sachs, Our Entire Economy Is Built On Fraud. A brief excerpt:
The Big Secret, of course, is that every living creature within a 100-mile radius of Cooper Union would fail “this scrutiny”—or that scrutiny, or any scrutiny, period. Not just in a 100-mile radius, but wherever there are still signs of economic life beating in these 50 United States, the mere whiff of scrutiny would work like nerve gas on what’s left of the economy. Because in the 21st century, fraud is as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet Volts—fraud’s all we got left, Doc. Scare off the fraud with Obama’s “scrutiny,” and the entire pyramid scheme collapses in a heap of smoldering savings accounts.
Eventually it will all come crashing down. And when it does, it won’t be pretty.
Tags: banks, capitalism, economy, extinction