financial perpetuum mobile apprenti-sorcerers (1980, updated 22.11.09)

"I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of man."
Sir Isaac Newton, 1643-1727, commenting on the South Sea bubble of 1720

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."
Thomas Jefferson, US President; 1743 - 1826, as quoted by Tanya Cariina Hsu

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people,
and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves,
we are called upon to appropriate the people’s money to settle the quarrel.”
Abraham Lincoln, speech to Illinois legislature, January 1837, as quoted by Ellen Brown

Nothing new under the sun: Rudyard Kipling's poem, The Gods of the Market, 1918

Charles Lindbergh Sr. called the Federal Reserve Act “the worst legislative crime of the ages.”
Ellen Brown quotes him as warning prophetically:
“[The Federal Reserve Board] can cause the pendulum of a rising and falling market
to swing gently back and forth by slight changes in the discount rate,
or cause violent fluctuations by greater rate variation,
and in either case it will possess inside information
as to financial conditions and advance knowledge of the coming change, either up or down.
This is the strangest, most dangerous advantage ever placed in the hands
of a special privilege class by any Government that ever existed. . . .
The financial system has been turned over to . . . a purely profiteering group.
The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits
from the use of other people’s money.

And in 1934, in the throes of the Great Depression,
Representative Louis McFadden would go further, stating on the Congressional record:
“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions.
They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves
and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.
In that dark crew of financial pirates
there are those who would cut a man’s throat to get a dollar out of his pocket;
there are those who send money into states to buy votes to control our legislatures;
there are those who maintain international propaganda for the purpose of deceiving us
into granting of new concessions which will permit them to cover up their past misdeeds
and set again in motion their gigantic train of crime.
These twelve private credit monopolies [Federal Reserve Bank branches]
were deceitfully and disloyally foisted upon this Country by the bankers who came here from Europe
and repaid us our hospitality by undermining our American institutions.”

Private, national & common wealth in the post-socialism/capitalism era

Bewildered by what's been happening, both nationally and globally, in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall?
I.e. where the unwittingly weakened nation-state - formerly a bulwark against plain-levelling & globalization -
no longer tempers the social, economic & other pitfalls foreseen by Marx,Gramsci, Minsky, McCulley,etc.
Where - as the Laffer & Rider Curves illustrate in the tax & the social fields - excessive poor/rich gradients
upset the social fabric, wash away fertility factors with uncontrolled erosive powers & contribute to famine.
Where indeed, as Patrick Martin pointed out, monopolistic capitalism and the associated reckless greed
are no longer kept in check by Adam Smith' invisible hand, i.e. by the balance of contradictory interests.
And where the capacity for self-correction is increasingly inhibited by loss of freedom, mooring & orientation
which led to market frenzies & false alpha birds feeding on hype & bubbles, reminiscent of the Roaring 20s.
IMF & FATFestimate black funds (drugs, tax evasion etc) to be 2-5% of world's GDP (2006: $960-2400bn).
An IMF Report indicates these funds to be increasingly chased under anti-terrorism & ever flimsier pretexts.
Courtesy by the IV Reich's Secret Service, the world has indeed been made hostage of ill-considered rules
which impede more legitimate business than crime. For big time money laundering, the US Treasury set the
standard in 2001 with its 31% confiscatory backup withholding tax on unidentified investors in US securities,
turning foreign bankers from trustees of clients into IRS agents (qualified intermediaries) subject to US laws.
Private equity & hedge funds thus found a government-sponsored access to black funds, while the latters'
entry into subprime markets was also eased by the Internet. Results: predatory lending & systemic risks.
Society's organization needs re-thinking with Plato, G.Duttweiler, M,Yunus, J.M.Arizmendiarrieta etc.
For man's evolution may only be stressed by technological leaps but not accelerated beyond natural limits.
Return on investment rates above productivity gains/organic growth are not sustainable, predatory & usuric.
If driven by managers, lawyers & funds on the back of other stakeholders, M&As are thus Ponzi schemes
where shareholder value adepts can maraud with stacked Monopoly cards, helped by micro-economic laws.
Like compulsory social insurance systems whose doom is delayed or obscured only by inflation, war, etc.
And where the cunniest operators are state-supported by myopic magistrates hood-winked into fiscal deals.
Gary J. Aguirre's US Senate testimony details fraud & market mechanics which were at work before 1929,
e.g. Ponzi structures, unregulated pools of money, siphoning from unsuspecting mutual fund investors, and
abuse-prone market dominance: hedge funds' $1.5 trillion drive half of the $28 trillion NYSE's daily trading.
Tongue-in-cheek, Warren Buffet famously opined: "derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction";
yet, under increasing performance & compliance pressures, some bankers still see a future in fee hunting.
Society wised up against churning of accounts by undelicate trustees, but not yet against macro-parasitism
which feasts on ignorance, sucks & devours a firm's life-preserving substance, & weakens society's pillars.
Which turns economic rat races into societal tailspins with early burn-outs & senior citizens being wasted,
& instills values causing youth to be educated out of sync, resulting in drug, violence & €1000 generations.
With profit-driven quarterly thinking & cost-cuttings also eroding due infrastructure maintenance & renewal,
& democracy's promises ridiculed by Fatf, EU & UN bureaucratic lawmaking as if Berlin Wall fell eastwards.
So why not thinking things over & “Revisiting Das Kapital while some dance on the Titanic”? Iconoclast