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First, I am thinking aloud here and am open to any criticism or thought people here have...
I think some media and general population doesnt realize or ignore the origin of Wall St. / Finance Capital corruption and short-termism in Cold War economics, jingoism, and foreign policy.
For a few decades (late 70s and on), our financial system was designed to make certain individuals as rich as possible without any thought about long-term effects or real value. Our country flew the flag of 'get rich quick' here as a counter to the USSR.
Morality and Ethics were as irrelevant as Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman determined. The strategy to outdo the USSR quarter by quarter and reward people publicly as much as possible was one of the ways to combat communism and its more moderate implementations of socialism. The role of advertising and mass media made these exceptions bigger than reality through whatever mechanics.
The collapse of the USSR validated their strategy and pushed them to outdo themselves as much as possible...leading to the virtual casino games of derivatives and fake money. We know the consequences.
If our press and leaders are afraid of bringing this up, its mainly because of the mess people get in when discussing Communism vs Capitalism. Our media is incapable of having this argument in the TV Segment and Ratings driven operation we have. No one can talk about this without getting accused of being a Communist before a Commercial Break or the next segment.
If we are not honest about why our financial markets were treated as dieties, then we are losing a clear picture of why things have been the way they have been, and how we can fix it.
I am not advocating turning the USA into a system of Soviets, but at the least, we have to roll back the HyperCapitalism that has been given a decade long freepass to screw us.
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