"The Burning Platform: The AGE OF MAMMON!"

[KoKo]

The Burning Platform: THE AGE OF MAMMON (Featured Article)

Posted on 29th August 2010 by JimQ

Bill Bonner, Greed, Greenwich CT, income, Leonard Cohen, NYC, penthouses, ruling elite, Simon Johnson, Wall Street, wealth

“Financiers – like bank robbers – do not create wealth. They merely distribute it. While the mob may idolize holdup men in good times, in the bad times it lynches them. What they will do to the new money men when their blood is up, we wait eagerly to find out.” - Mobs, Messiahs and Markets




As our economy hurtles towards its meeting with destiny, the political class seeks to assign blame on their enemies for this Greater Depression. The Republicans would like you to believe that Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin, Chris Dodd, and Barney Frank and their Community Reinvest Act caused the collapse of our financial system. Democrats want you to believe that George Bush and his band of unregulated free market capitalists created a financial disaster of epic proportions. The truth is that America has been captured by a financial class that makes no distinction between parties. These barbarians have sucked the life out of a once productive nation by raping and pillaging with impunity while enriching only them. They live in 20,000 square foot $10 million mansions in Greenwich, CT and in $3 million dollar penthouses on Central Park West.

These are the robber barons that represent the Age of Mammon. The greed, avarice, gluttony and acute materialism of these American traitors has not been seen in this country since the 1920′s. The hedge fund managers and Wall Street bank executives that occupy the mansions and penthouses evidently don’t find much time to read the bible in their downtime from raping and pillaging the wealth of the middle class. There are cocktail parties and $5,000 a plate political “fundraisers” to attend. You can’t be cheap when buying off your protection in Washington DC.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. – Matthew 6:19-21,24

It seems that Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, may have been overstating the case in saying his firm is doing God’s work. With his $67.9 million compensation in 2007 and payment of $20.2 billion to his co-conspirators, Blankfein appears to be a proverbial camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle. This compensation was paid in the year before the financial collapse brought on by the criminal actions of Lloyd and his fellow henchmen. After having his firm bailed out by the American middle class taxpayer at the behest of fellow Goldman alumni Hank Paulson, Lloyd practiced his version of austerity by cutting compensation for his flock to only $16.2 billion ($500,000 per employee) in 2009. I’m all for people making as much money as they can for doing a good job. But, I ask you – What benefits have Goldman Sachs, the other Wall Street banks, and hedge funds provided for America?

Never have so few, done so little, and made so much, while screwing so many.

In 2005, the top 25 hedge fund managers “earned” $9 billion, or an average of $360 million. One year after a financial collapse caused by the financial innovations peddled by Wall Street, the top 25 hedge fund managers paid themselves $25 billion, or an average of $1 billion a piece. For some perspective, there were 7 million unemployed Americans in 2006. Today there are 14.6 million unemployed Americans. While the country plunges deeper into Depression, the barbarians pick up the pace of their plundering and looting of the remaining wealth of the nation. Bill Bonner and Lila Rajiva pointed out a basic truth in 2007, before the financial collapse.

“On the Forbes list of rich people, you will find hedge fund managers in droves, but no one who made his money as a hedge fund client.” - Mobs, Messiahs and Markets

Ask the clients of Bernie Madoff how they are doing.

1920′s Redux

The parallels between the period leading up to the Great Depression and our current situation leading to a Greater Depression are revealing. When you examine the facts without looking through the prism of party politics it becomes clear that when the wealth and power of the country are overly concentrated in the clutches of the top 1% wealthiest Americans, financial collapse and depression follow. This concentration of income and wealth did not cause the Stock Market Crash of 1929 or the financial system implosion in 2008, but they were a symptom of a sick system of warped incentives. The top 1% of income earners were raking in 24% of all the income in America in 1928. After World War II until 1980, the top 1% of income earners consistently took home between 9% and 11% of all income in the country. During the 1950′s and 1960′s when average Americans made tremendous strides in their standard of living, the top 1% were earning 10% of all income. A hard working high school graduate could rise into the middle class, owning a home and a car.




Much More of an EXCELLENT READ with Charts of Middle Class Rape at:


http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-age-mammon

[truedelphi]

1. And who do our politiicans sup with?

Certainly not with the workers and the unemployed, but with the money people.

I mean, even little Chelsea Clinton grew up to be a hedge fund manager.

A great job if you can get it - you spend half your time campaigning for your mom, and theother half planning your five million dollar wedding.

[KoKo]

2. Yep...who do they sup with in their Beltway Parties...their "get together" in Georgetown.

And the incestuous relationships with Big Media and the "folks who brung them to the dance."

[lunatica]

5. Wow! Why don't you just jump off the deep end exaggerating as much as possible!

Chelsea Clinton is an asset to this country.

[KoKo]

6. Chelsea Clinton got a great job...and she worked for it at McKinsey Associates...She's left it...

but, that Chelsea got that job and left it says she's maybe not a "chip off the old block."

She seems to want to do more with her life than "BE RICH." However her hubby is a Wall Streeter..Commidity Trading or something...so she if free to live her life doing what she wants.

[truedelphi]

9. ABC from February 2008

February 19, 2008 4:48 PM

ABC News' reporters Jennifer Parker and Eloise Harper:

Sen. Hillary Clinton took a swipe at her daughter's profession today at an economic round table discussion at a restaurant in Parma, Ohio, suggesting wealthy investment bankers and hedge fund managers on Wall Street aren't doing real 'work.'

The former first lady's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, works for New York-based hedge fund Avenue Capital Group. She previously worked in New York for McKinsey & Company, her first job after graduating with her master's degree from Oxford University.

"We also have to reward work more," Clinton told a small group of Ohio residents today. "and by that, I mean, I have people in New York working on Wall Street as investment managers, as hedge fund executives. Under the tax code, they can pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes on $50 million dollars, than a teacher, or a nurse, or a truck driver in Parma pays on $50,000. That's very discouraging to people."

You just feel like, 'wait a minute. I'm working as hard as I can.' All those people you see in your law office. They're working as hard as they can and they feel like they're just getting further and further behind," Clinton said.

No one would rally care if these hedge fund managers and the rest of the Wall Street Upper Elite were actually producing anything of value.

But not so much as one paper clip gets manufactured from all the paper trading that they do.

And the profits they bring to whatever portfolios they are involved with will Ponzi scheme apart, the next time the mega-bank merger bubble tanks.

Might be a year, or five years but that bubble will burst just like the housing bubble before that, the stock market before that, the dot come before that and on.

Meanwhile the average person sees only a long L Shaped recovery like what Japan faced.

But hey, the five million dollar weddings that other people throw themselves are so fascinating - if we can't be royalty, we can at least watch 'em, can't we...

[Heywood J]

12. Financiers are national assets now?

That might be the source of what ails this country.

[Fumesucker]

3. If you worship Mammon you need no other God.. n/t

[KoKo]

8. Money is the Thing, the Thing, The Thing...It will give you Power and

make sure that EVERYONE YOU TOUCH has benefits. That's what "THEY" tell us.

When the rest of us know that it's "COMMUNITY" that's "THE THING" that keeps you from commiting Suicide when your FIRST PLANS don't work out!

[opihimoimoi]

4. KnR #6 This is PRICELESS.....KEEP IT KICKED....

[Scruffy1]

7. Great Post

[KoKo]

10. not much interest in it though...

:shrug:

[Buns_of_Fire]

11. K&R. I'd suggest we eat them, too, but who wants that much fat in their diet? nt