re: Towards a New Capitalism

Johnny — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:43:24 GMT

It’s truly unbelievable that the current administration has not devised a stimulus package yet. Very quick to save banks, yet seemingly not smart enough to stimulate the real economy, what are they waiting for?
I also do not buy the end of capitalism arguments.
I believe capitalism is an intrinsic part of human nature, as natural as two kids swapping a baseball card for a cool drink; there is intrinsic value and currency.
I do however also believe there is such as thing as bad capitalism, out of control capitalism, one where greed surpasses sanity, and that’s unfortunately where we are at today.

Essentially I believe capitalism is just a system, and like an engineering control system can go completely wrong if badly tuned.
The controller in capitalism is the central bank, and I question the wisdom of allowing anyone other than a country to own a central bank.
Interest earned by a central bank must be seen as a control mechanism, not as profit, and I think that’s where its all gone wrong, as well as in other monetary and fiscal area’s that have been manipulated for war funding.
Let me put it this way; I’ve offered to buy my country’s central bank at any price they want, because once I own the money printing presses and earn interest on every dollar issued, payment is not a problem.
So besides something that should not be owned by individuals or shareholders and that should be used only to control a system, I question how a central bank is ever sold in the first place?
I would hazard a guess and say that the very instant the US “sold” its central bank, is also the instant the US started going wrong, culminating in the ridiculous dilemma now, an America that is not owned by Americans, which really explains the seemingly suicidal behavior of US policy, and wars that make no sense (to Americans).

A country that can send people to the moon but cannot determine if another country has weapons of mass destruction, no, I don’t believe it.
A country that is being used to fight personal agenda’s and that is being controlled through the banking system, oh yes, that sounds about right.

Now I believe there is no longer an alternative, the world needs a new central bank owned by all nations, and not individuals.
Naturally this inter-country currency will be resisted, but I think if the US really thinks about it, they will see that in the new world being a reference currency is a liability, it’s a systemic problem.
I don’t think the US will be the first civilization not to realize that having money is a good thing, being money will destroy you.
The problem with having banks in one country and more value added outside a country, is that it works well for a little while, but while greedy bankers are still clapping their hand with joy, the empire crumbles.
Hopefully this time humanity will see the problem; possibly it’s too late already.

I believe a new global central bank, and global democratic inter-country money is the only way to go now, owned by all countries, controlled by no one country.
I can’t ever see a future pensioner investing in the current system, or another country ever trusting the US again, or each other.
I certainly wont be putting my hard earned salary into a system that has a shorter life than I do!
I would say that Capitalism is not dead, but “this” Capitalistic system is stone dead.
We repair it rapidly or we go to war, this is now the only choice we have.

Johnny Kewl

re: Towards a New Capitalism

Isaac N — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:13:39 GMT

Very noble not to wish to apportion blame but unless you understand causes it is very hard to put in place measures to ensure it does not happen again. There are fundamentally 2 causes/areas to blame. Firstly, yet again, the financial leaders have been caught out selling products, essentially derivatives, they do not understand - remember Rogue Trader Nick Leason? As a CEO one should assume you do actually understand your business. Secondly it is a failure of corporate governance which is ironic since a lot of corporate governance was created for the banking industry. There is a linkage here - non-executive directors, who work for shareholders, should hold executive boards accountable for personally understanding, in granular detail, the products they sell. In your industry Murdoch is a great example of a CEO who knows his business. Would imagine you are too since as a CEO you take the time to blog and thereby get immersed with new media.