What do Michael Owen and Jérôme Kerviel have in common?
What's the difference between a whistleblower and a whistle blower?
Why is there nothing, rather than something?
The answer to each of these questions lie in this post although they are secreted, providing merely an essence of the linkage of neorealities.
Shareholder capitalism is assured of spontaneous combustion as, by its very nature, it encourages and handsomely rewards psychopathic short-termism at the expense of the rationality of a sustainable strategy. On a super-systemic level, this results in super-issues like climate change whereas on a systemic level, it is in the process of creating the biggest recession since 1929.
Quoting Jack Rasmus: "History will show a remarkable congruence between the conditions, events, and policies of the decade of the 1920s, on the one hand, and the events and policies of the past decade. The 1920s were characterised by:
* an over-extended housing and construction boom in mid-decade that imploded
* a slowdown in investment in the productive economy as speculative investment steadily crowded out real investment
* a Federal Reserve System that pumped up the money supply without concern for its eventual speculative impact
* an increasing imbalance in world trade and currency instability
* the near destruction of labour unions
The progressive destruction of unions over the course of the 1920s, when combined with the radical restructuring of the tax system that provided massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, resulted in a dramatic shift in income distribution toward wealthy investors and corporations from the rest of the working population... Perhaps more than any single contributory factor, the rapid and extreme growth of income inequality during the decade was eventually responsible for the ultimate financial implosion of 1929 and the consequent depression. The massive shift in incomes that fed the speculation in turn resulted in a further income shift, as super-profits were realised by the wealthy from the speculative investment frenzy. More concentration of income in turn provoked a dizzy spiral of asset price inflation, speculative profits, and a euphoric expectation the process would continue without limit".
The Federal Reserve is currently supporting the entire US shareholder capitalist edifice by becoming the ultimate lender of the last resort in the same manner as the British government is "stabilising" Northern Rock. Free markets are not supposed to be reliant on government and/or central bank largesse to function the performativities desired in the warped world of the monetarists. Of course, Bear Stearns or the British bank could not be allowed to go under as, particularly in the former case, the tentacles of risk diversion would have impacted upon the cash flows of other leading global financial institutions. So, when the guardians of the financial system mess up, it has to be the taxpayers that scaffold together the financial infrastructure.
When Hank Paulson took over as Bush's economic maestro, he basically brought the boardroom of Goldman Sachs into the White House. The dichotomous relevance of possibilities afforded to the top investment bank via having their hands on some very serious levers of financial power evidently proved just a little too tempting as the investment bank cashed in on their inappropriate access to both inside information and policy directives ahead of the marketplace. Cue the sub-prime fiasco. Nobody knows who the patsy is so nobody trusts anybody and the banking system seizes up while the public dig deep to pay the bonuses of the financial sector in a downturn. An impartial observer might feel that some heavy duty restrictive regulation would be the order of the day and such an observer would be surprised by the chutzpah exhibited by the man-with-his-hands-on-the-levers, Hank Paulson: "... more regulation is not the answer to the current crisis" claimed the architect of the recession before arguing in favour of a more streamlined system with fewer regulators.
The man is taking the piss. This libertarian fascist approach to the financial world is the standard Anglo/US template. And we are entering that other warped world here - the one of incentives and gaming the regulation, of moral hazard and psychopathic financial edifices. Libertarian fascism demands a free-for-all marketplace with limited and loopholed regulation. This demand is based on the fallacy that such an environment is necessary for the maximised input-output ratio of the economic and financial system. The abusive and autocratic power hierarchy created undoubtedly enables oligarchical treasuries to be established by the most psychopathic in the shareholder capitalist grand prix - a race to the bottom of a very murky barrel. The winners, being suitably well rewarded, then purchase the media to inform us of the hyperrealities that are suitable for our digestion.
Short term greed, unfortunately for us, destabilises the financial system and, consequently, less regulation is the very last thing that we need. They love lumping moral hazard, inversed incentives and a fear template on the rest of us but such restrictions are not for the likes of financiers. If central banks and governments are supporting the financial system AND if the system is further deregulated THEN moral hazard dictates that psychopathic traders (and their string-pulling and yet "invisible" bosses) will engender further antisocial strategies that knock the system out of any semblance of equilibrium over and over again. Of course, volatile marketplaces are among the most cherished for market analysts with arbitrage opportunities galore and insider information taking on the aspect of gold dust, but, for the rest of the planet, insecurity and uncertainty without the provision by the state of any of the basic societal safety nets ain't much fun.
Privatisation is not a comfort. In Britain, the National Health Service doesn't function for either state or private patients as the very structure is illogical and unsustainable. Pensions? Forget it. Banks? Your risk. Airports have simply become shopping malls where, occasionally, one is also allowed to travel, at a time of the BAA's choosing, to a choice of destinations in the secure knowledge that your belongings will be performing an entirely different random walk of selected global airport terminals. The Private Finance Initiative will continue to undermine future cashflows as Brown's fiscal sleight of hand provides further momentum to the oncoming recession. We can't even trust their consumer objects. We don't make purchases, we rent objects with a built-in obsolescence - a kettle for life or an annual kettle, which might become an object of conversation year after year as different forms, colours and styles are introduced to the series?
We should expect that excessive control will be given to the owners of the core information. The rest of us will be reduced to cloned holistics from observations of the hyperreality. This is not a valid social system.
Regulators are able to earn 4/5 times their wages if they leap into the private sector. Unsurprisingly, this leads to a paucity of nous in the regulatory sector - incentives again. Repeatedly, wherever you research in the global financial system, you discover a system and a template seemingly primed for corruption by insiders.
Minimal and corrupt, or inept, regulation, opportunities for insider corruption, pliable markets, no media focus on the systemic corruption, the utilisation of hyperrealities that bear no resemblance to any reality whatsoever...
The financial and economic systemic template shares structural equivalences with the sub-systemic template represented by the football sector. There are some macro/micro differentials and, obviously, the fundamentals are sector specific but the infrastructures of the corrupt constructs share many similarities. Both have rogue traders. Both require corrupt regulation and policing in order to function. Both thrive on insider trading. Both are hyperrealities - Paulson skews realities; Scudamore skews realities. In the financial sector, all analysts await the release of key reports which detail the proprietary trading of industry insiders in their own companies; in the football sector, our Trading Team await the release of market information which detail the proprietary trading of a Premiership referee on a match in which he is to officiate.
Jean Baudrillard:
"The Gulf War did not take place".
"...an atrocity masquerading as a war".
The 2007/08 Premiership did not take place.
... a corruption masquerading as a tournament.
Egyptian footballer, Mohamed Aboutrika, removes his shirt after scoring at the African Cup of Nations to reveal the message "Sympathize With Gaza". He was booked and disciplined by the Confederation of African Football. Aboutrika committed a crime against the hyperreality, the system demands that he be punished. The scoring of a goal is the ultimate moment in a football match, whether real or hyperreal. Brand association with feelgood, success, joy, hysteria, is what they are paying for. Forget Gaza, think AIG. Think fear. Think insurance. "Great goal but I should perhaps be considering a key person insurance policy...". Thanks AIG.
The hyperreal world offers you the Quattro Titanium and the Nascar Cool Orange 500, Showdown Saturdays and Grand Slam Sundays. We prefer Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton. We prefer reality.
Socialisme ou barbarie.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
