5 ms·

Perhaps before reading this article, you should check out this one, also by NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19gold.html?pagewanted=all http://ww

Perhaps before reading this article, you should check out this one, also by NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19gold.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19gold.html?pagew... As usual, take any propaganda with a grain of salt, but IMHO, from the info I have gathered thus far, Goldman Sachs and our government are almost the same entity, separated only by who reaps the benefits. Private gains, public losses.

api 12y ago
I'd love to see a really scholarly non-sensationalistic analysis of who this new nobility actually is and what the real power structure really looks like. I've seen bits and pieces of that, but they always strike me as kind of superficial and conspiranoid-tinged, leaving me still skeptical. I accept the central thesis -- there is obviously a nobility here in the classical "feudal" sense -- but I'm not convinced people like Matt Taibbi have more than a tabloid-ish understanding of it. People like him are also clearly selling something, and that makes them play favorites in their own ways. Such an understanding would be helpful if we are to have any hope of charting an exit path from this condition. It could inform the authoring of meaningful reforms instead of vapid and ultimately impotent populist trash.
- olefoo 12y ago
  You should probably start with http://littlesis.org/ http://littlesis.org/ as they've been doing this charting for a while. But it's more complex than, say the french nobility in the 18th century since there is no central authority and access to the peerage is explicitly obscured ( there is no nobility in America ) and although it is certainly possible for individuals to lose favor and fall out of the elite ( Bill Cosby this week ). It's worth remembering that the prime threat to Aristocrats has always been other Aristocrats aside from the occasional epic convulsion like the french revolution or the english reformation. Given the current state of affairs, America looks most closely parallel to pre-renaissance Italy. Although if Jeff Koontz is our Michelangelo; perhaps we don't deserve our empire.
- bcoates 12y ago
  No grand conspiracy is needed. The purpose of the government is to be a place you can go, when you need to obtain someone else's money to spend on someone other than yourself (and if you're doing it right, keep a bit for yourself). The purpose of finance, is to be a place you can go, when you've been given someone else's money, and need to find something to spend it on (and if you're doing it right, keep a bit for yourself). The interests are so perfectly aligned no external coordination or policing is needed -- the system just works. Naturally everyone involved is buddies with each other, and taking care of your buddies so that they can stay in a position to take care of you is just human nature. Even less sleazily, if you actually want to get something done inside the system, the only source of actual competence is the insiders -- it's not like there's some priesthood of uninvolved experts that have the slightest clue how to manage things. Financial regulatory capture isn't so much a tragedy as the only way anything could possibly get done.
  - api 12y ago
    Great reply, but I think it supports the nobility thesis. Non-conspiracy mechanisms are more effective than conspiracies... a real conspiracy is hard, and most utterly fail. The essence of your post is "the only source of actual competence is insiders." It's a difficulty that emerges around any attempt to create an alternative anything. But it has been done. I do wonder if we are seeing the very earliest embryonic steps toward a new kind of financial system with stuff like bitcoin. It's not even close to baked, but there is there there.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    >Financial regulatory capture isn't so much a tragedy as the only way anything could possibly get done. It could more accurately be described as a parasitic takeover of the host. Whether you consider that tragic I guess depends upon whether you are part of the parasite (the financial system) or the host (society).
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    Just because you can phrase things to sound similar does not mean they are actually similar in reality. For thousands of years, governments were not run by or for bankers, except on the rare occasions when they were. In fact, bankers were often lynched and run out of whole territories whenever governments or even the masses could not pay their debts -- the state power was held by those with lands and armies rather than by money-lenders. If you cannot be bothered to examine today's situation in its particulars, you won't come up with workable solutions. For my own position: definancialization of the broader economy would go a long way to breaking banks from the state.
- hackuser 12y ago
  > I'd love to see a really scholarly non-sensationalistic analysis of who this new nobility actually is and what the real power structure really looks like. I'm not sure I agree that it's really nobility or call it feudal, but I would love to see some serious research. One interesting pattern: Many of the wealthy, such as the Koch brothers, push hard against government power and expenditure. That leaves society more dependent on those same wealthy people, giving them more influence both absolutely and also relative to government. As a simple example I read an article advising people seeking grants for scientific research to network with the wealthy because government research spending has been cut. The same applies to the arts, education, social welfare, etc.
- pastProlog 12y ago
  > analysis of who this new nobility actually is and what the real power structure really looks like https://twitter.com/alexia/status/522517041983393793 https://twitter.com/alexia/status/522517041983393793 > I've seen bits and pieces of that, but they always strike me as kind of superficial and conspiranoid-tinged The main left-wing, non-superficial analysis of the 2008 financial crisis that I know of is this - http://monthlyreview.org/2008/12/01/financial-implosion-and-stagnation/ http://monthlyreview.org/2008/12/01/financial-implosion-and-... It has plenty of data, as well as an analysis of the data from their viewpoint. Eleven years after Marx died, Engels published the third volume of Capital from Marx's draft and notes. In it he lays out the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in capitalism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_... ), and other such things. The Monthly Review article links to the US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis of US GDP growth. In the 1960s it was 4.4% a year, in the "stagnant" 1970s it was 3.3% a year, in the 1980s it was 3.1% a year, in the 1990s it was also 3.1% a year, and from 2000-2007 it was 2.6% a year (if it has been extended to 2008 and 2009 it would have been lower).
  - api 12y ago
    Good article. While I don't consider myself a Marxist in any dogmatic sense, I do think Marx was pretty good at diagnosing the problems of capitalism. I just don't think he was any good at fixing them. The real successor to capitalism is a socioeconomic system that has yet to be invented.
- prawn 12y ago
  Would material that named names be subject to more legal issues and scare off writers?

api 12y ago

I'd love to see a really scholarly non-sensationalistic analysis of who this new nobility actually is and what the real power structure really looks like. I've seen bits and pieces of that, but they always strike me as kind of superficial and conspiranoid-tinged, leaving me still skeptical. I accept the central thesis -- there is obviously a nobility here in the classical "feudal" sense -- but I'm not convinced people like Matt Taibbi have more than a tabloid-ish understanding of it. People like him are also clearly selling something, and that makes them play favorites in their own ways. Such an understanding would be helpful if we are to have any hope of charting an exit path from this condition. It could inform the authoring of meaningful reforms instead of vapid and ultimately impotent populist trash.

olefoo 12y ago
You should probably start with http://littlesis.org/ http://littlesis.org/ as they've been doing this charting for a while. But it's more complex than, say the french nobility in the 18th century since there is no central authority and access to the peerage is explicitly obscured ( there is no nobility in America ) and although it is certainly possible for individuals to lose favor and fall out of the elite ( Bill Cosby this week ). It's worth remembering that the prime threat to Aristocrats has always been other Aristocrats aside from the occasional epic convulsion like the french revolution or the english reformation. Given the current state of affairs, America looks most closely parallel to pre-renaissance Italy. Although if Jeff Koontz is our Michelangelo; perhaps we don't deserve our empire.
bcoates 12y ago
No grand conspiracy is needed. The purpose of the government is to be a place you can go, when you need to obtain someone else's money to spend on someone other than yourself (and if you're doing it right, keep a bit for yourself). The purpose of finance, is to be a place you can go, when you've been given someone else's money, and need to find something to spend it on (and if you're doing it right, keep a bit for yourself). The interests are so perfectly aligned no external coordination or policing is needed -- the system just works. Naturally everyone involved is buddies with each other, and taking care of your buddies so that they can stay in a position to take care of you is just human nature. Even less sleazily, if you actually want to get something done inside the system, the only source of actual competence is the insiders -- it's not like there's some priesthood of uninvolved experts that have the slightest clue how to manage things. Financial regulatory capture isn't so much a tragedy as the only way anything could possibly get done.
- api 12y ago
  Great reply, but I think it supports the nobility thesis. Non-conspiracy mechanisms are more effective than conspiracies... a real conspiracy is hard, and most utterly fail. The essence of your post is "the only source of actual competence is insiders." It's a difficulty that emerges around any attempt to create an alternative anything. But it has been done. I do wonder if we are seeing the very earliest embryonic steps toward a new kind of financial system with stuff like bitcoin. It's not even close to baked, but there is there there.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  >Financial regulatory capture isn't so much a tragedy as the only way anything could possibly get done. It could more accurately be described as a parasitic takeover of the host. Whether you consider that tragic I guess depends upon whether you are part of the parasite (the financial system) or the host (society).
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Just because you can phrase things to sound similar does not mean they are actually similar in reality. For thousands of years, governments were not run by or for bankers, except on the rare occasions when they were. In fact, bankers were often lynched and run out of whole territories whenever governments or even the masses could not pay their debts -- the state power was held by those with lands and armies rather than by money-lenders. If you cannot be bothered to examine today's situation in its particulars, you won't come up with workable solutions. For my own position: definancialization of the broader economy would go a long way to breaking banks from the state.
hackuser 12y ago
> I'd love to see a really scholarly non-sensationalistic analysis of who this new nobility actually is and what the real power structure really looks like. I'm not sure I agree that it's really nobility or call it feudal, but I would love to see some serious research. One interesting pattern: Many of the wealthy, such as the Koch brothers, push hard against government power and expenditure. That leaves society more dependent on those same wealthy people, giving them more influence both absolutely and also relative to government. As a simple example I read an article advising people seeking grants for scientific research to network with the wealthy because government research spending has been cut. The same applies to the arts, education, social welfare, etc.
pastProlog 12y ago
> analysis of who this new nobility actually is and what the real power structure really looks like https://twitter.com/alexia/status/522517041983393793 https://twitter.com/alexia/status/522517041983393793 > I've seen bits and pieces of that, but they always strike me as kind of superficial and conspiranoid-tinged The main left-wing, non-superficial analysis of the 2008 financial crisis that I know of is this - http://monthlyreview.org/2008/12/01/financial-implosion-and-stagnation/ http://monthlyreview.org/2008/12/01/financial-implosion-and-... It has plenty of data, as well as an analysis of the data from their viewpoint. Eleven years after Marx died, Engels published the third volume of Capital from Marx's draft and notes. In it he lays out the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in capitalism ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_... ), and other such things. The Monthly Review article links to the US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis of US GDP growth. In the 1960s it was 4.4% a year, in the "stagnant" 1970s it was 3.3% a year, in the 1980s it was 3.1% a year, in the 1990s it was also 3.1% a year, and from 2000-2007 it was 2.6% a year (if it has been extended to 2008 and 2009 it would have been lower).
- api 12y ago
  Good article. While I don't consider myself a Marxist in any dogmatic sense, I do think Marx was pretty good at diagnosing the problems of capitalism. I just don't think he was any good at fixing them. The real successor to capitalism is a socioeconomic system that has yet to be invented.
prawn 12y ago
Would material that named names be subject to more legal issues and scare off writers?