Tempting Tuesday – Murdochs Testify to Parliament

NWS is down 20% of late.

Today we hear from the Murdoch family, owners of the venerated Wall Street Journal as well as Dow Jones, Inc., who will be explaining how their company allegedly broke the rules, lied, threatened and/or bribed almost everyone, engaged in cover-ups, slandered anyone who got in their way and callously ruined the lives of innocent people – all in the name of profits.  Already Sean Hoare, the reporter who blew the whistle on Murdoch has been found dead inside his London apartment.  "The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing," said a police statement.

Would that be the same British Police Department that’s had two high-level resignations over accepting bribes from Murdoch’s organization?  The Daily Mirror newspaper quoted an unnamed friend as saying Hoare "thought that someone was going to come and get him, but I didn’t know whether to believe half the stuff he was saying."  In other words, Hoare was poor and intimidated by NWS (he was refusing to testify against them) while the Murdochs are rich so every possible benefit of the doubt is being given to them just like Rebecca Nalepa was found with her hands and feet bound with a rope around he neck hung off a balcony in a San Diego mansion and the police there are thinking "suicide."

As F. Scott Fitzgerald once said: "The rich are different than you and me – they have more money."  As Bill Domhoff pointed out this weekend, when we talk about the rich, we don’t mean the top 1% – people who "only" make $1.6M a year or more.  Sure those of us in that group may have a "get out of jail free" card for when we speed and we may get our buildings approved quicker than most and we may get a local ordinance passed here or there but, when you move up to the top 0.1% ($36M or higher per year income) or the top 0.01% ($450M or higher annual income), where Mr. Murdoch lives – not only do you get both national and international laws rewritten to suit your needs (like taking over 100% of the UKs satellite broadcasts), but the other laws don’t even apply to you.

This lack of accountability leads to increasing bad behavior, as evidenced by our own financial crisis, where the Masters of our Universe screwed their own clients with "shitty deals" yet not a single arrest has been made other than finally shutting down one Ponzi scheme so that the rest of Wall Street can point to Madoff and say – "See, people were arrested" even though he had NOTHING to do with the sub-prime lending or CDS fiascos that destroyed the US economy and cost the taxpayers (so far) $9 Trillion Dollars or 180 times more than the size of Madoff’s entire fund, much of which has now been recovered.  Unlike Madoff victims, the victims of the Banksters will never have a special prosecutor on their side with the power to recover our money. 

That’s because just 10 banks, most in the famous international "Gang of 12" which includes both Murdoch and GE (both of whom control the media – especially the Financial Media) own 77% of our nation’s banking assets.  That’s 40% up from 55% back in 2002, when Bush deregulation let these banks go totally wild.  GS, MS , JPM, C, BAC and WFC are the 6 top US banks with $10Tn in assets between them.  Others in our Gang of 12 are the EU powerhouses of CS, DB, BCS and Nomura in Japan – they are the masters of the financial universe and the expression applies to any of the majors who use their assets to influence the Global Economy in pursuit of (what else?) more wealth.  

Our current tax structure does not simply allow but ENCOURAGES wealth to pool into the hands of the relatively few.  $10Tn in the hands of 6 US banks represents a 40% increase ($4Tn) over 2002.  If we work that backwards then we see that there USED to be $4Tn in the bottom 99% that has now been transferred to the top 1%.  That’s OK though, I’m sure they can afford it – after all, there’s 99 of them for each one of us and we are, after all, better (richer) than them, are we not?  

So the poor banks (and the poor people who bank there) used to have 45% of the nation’s assets just 9 years ago but hey, look on the bright side – they STILL have 23%, that’s more than half!  This is why we have to tax the bottom 99% more – otherwise we would have less to trickle on them with!

As you can see from this chart (thanks Jessie’s Cafe American), the US already taxes our Corporations and Citizens less than almost any other nation on Earth and that, of course, had led us to run up TREMENDOUS deficits, to the point where we had to borrow $15 Trillion just to keep pretending we could run our Government without collecting the taxes to pay for it.  That’s BRILLIANT though because the rich people get 99% of the tax breaks while the deficit is EVERYONE’s problem.  

In fact, for the past few years, our Federal Reserve has placed a stealth tax on ALL of the American people by devaluing our Dollar by 15%.  The cool thing about taxing the population by devaluing the currency is it’s not just a tax on one year’s earnings but a tax on everything they have worked to accumulate over their entire lives!  That’s right – through inflation, the Fed is able to reach into your bank account and under your mattress and, of course, into your home equity and take 15% of EVERYTHING you have – whether you declare it or not.  

There are no loopholes (which are now over $1Tn a year for the top 1%) to escape from inflation unless, of course, you are a Member of the investing class and you own stocks or commodities or collectibles that rise against inflation.  Then you are in such good shape that 40% of the nation’s wealth actually migrates from the bottom 99% into your bank account in less than a decade.  Come on, you’ve gotta love this country – Go Capitalism!