MarketWatch: The new Capitalist Anarchy and the Lobbyist Bubble

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March 23, 2010, 5:11 a.m. EDT ·

The new Capitalist Anarchy and the Lobbyist Bubble
261,000 lobbyists signal death of 'invisible hand,' America's moral compass

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch


ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Anarchy? Yes, America is descending into anarchy. No leadership in anarchy, just endless battles, warring fiefdoms competing for power -- shifting power.

That's our new America. Democracy's dead. Texans rebranded us a "constitutional republic" for their textbooks. But either way, voting's irrelevant.

So what are we? What label fits? Some historians call America an oligarchy or plutocracy, a nation ruled by a small elite whose power comes from wealth, family or the military. Some call us a cryptocracy, where politicians merely front for a shadow government. The recent Supreme Court decision giving corporations the same rights as real humans certainly reinforces that idea of shadow government.

But there is no one single elite running America in secret. Rather, America is run by many fragmented elites, many divergent special interests with huge cash war chests. These special interests daily battle each other like vultures over a carcass stuffed with two tasty jewels: A bigger piece of the $1.5 trillion federal budget pie and, far more important, favorable laws protecting, vesting and increasing the power and wealth of their special interests. That's anarchy in action.

America's economic anarchists compete on a zero-sum battlefield where the rules are simple: "I win, you lose" and "every man for himself." But no one fights for the public interest. No one. The "common good" is irrelevant; only "greed is good." Terms like democracy, republic, plutocracy, oligarchy and cryptocracy no longer apply. This is war.

Capitalism's 'invisible hand' is dead in the new American Anarchy

But what about "capitalism?" Also dead. Greed killed what Adam Smith said was the "soul" of capitalism. Capitalism now has no moral compass. Former Fed vice-chair Alan Blinder hit the nail on the head: "When economists first heard Gekko's now-famous dictum, 'Greed is good,' they thought it a crude expression of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand' ... But in Smith's vision, greed is socially beneficial only when properly harnessed and channeled'... when these conditions fail to hold, greed is not good." ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-capitalist-anarchy-and-the-lobbyist-bubble-2010-03-23