Chris Hedges discusses the descent of the American Empire

Author Chris Hedges argues that the American Empire is following the trajectory of all empires; we are expanding beyond our capacity to sustain ourselves. We have run up deficits we have no way to repay. We are "hollowing the country out from the inside." Nearly one-third of Americans are living in poverty. We are destroying quality education. We are reaching a "terminal point." Unless we change our course, we will face collapse. The current electoral system is not a legitimate place for seeking meaningful reform, not given the state of money-dominated elections.

Those captive to images cast ballots based on how candidates make them fee. They vote for a slogan, a smile, perceived sincerity, and attractiveness, along with the carefully crafted personal narrative of the candidate. It is style and story, not content and fact, that inform mass politics.
Hedges points out that the structure of the corporate state is thoroughly immunized from meaningful change from a Democrat like Barack Obama, no different than a Republican like George W. Bush. We are facing a bi-partisan-approved looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street and domestic spying. Obama's health care bill is no exception, having been written by corporate lobbyists (4 min) It is "essentially the equivalent of the bank bailout bill written for the insurance and pharmaceutical industry, with $400 million of subsidies." Under the new system, corporate insurers can hold sick children hostage while bankrupting their parents (5 min). Hedges often criticizes liberals. He explains: The liberal class was never designed to function as the political left. (min 6). It was designed to function as the political center. In the early 1900s liberals were quite vocal and held significant political power. They produced publications with wide circulation. There were several dozen socialist mayors in America. He argues that America got involved in WWI, despite any serious public support, because American bankers had loaned substantial money to Great Britain and France, and they didn't want to lose their money. (min. 7). As the century went on, politicians followed the 1922 advice of Walter Lipman to use propaganda "to manufacture consent." There's no need to throw many people in prison when you can "herd" them using war-related-emotion rather than facts or reason. (min. 9). A meaningful liberal class, provoked by radical and populist movements, would make piecemeal and incremental reform possible to benefit the needs of the working class. Such radical movements are rare these post-Red-Scare days, and there is thus no longer any bulwark to "protect us from the corporate state." We have turned from an Empire of Production to an Empire of Over-Consumption. We non longer have true liberals. Instead, we have faux liberals, people who "speak the language of traditional liberalism like Bill Clinton, yet serve the interests of the corporate state." (Min 12). Hedges offers the following evidence of Clinton's assaults on the working class: NAFTA, destruction of welfare, deregulation of the FCC, destruction of the banking system (the US differs from Canada, which did not tear down the firewall of Glass-Steagall). The U.S. has allowed hedge funds to take over its banks). To top things off, Barack Obama "essentially codifies the destruction of both domestic and international law put in place by the Bush Administration," a severe assault on civil liberties, including the right of the Executive branch to carry out assassinations and the new military detention act, which allows Americans to be indefinitely detained if accused of being a "terrorist," an absurdly nebulous charge. As a result, we now live under "inverted totalitarianism," which "does not find its expression through a demagogue or charismatic leader, but through the anonymity of the corporate state." In our inverted totalitarianism, corporate forces pretend to pay homage to the iconography and patriotism of America, but "have so corrupted the levers of power that as to render the citizenry powerless." (min 14). Here is the creed of modern liberals:
The creed of impartiality and "objectivity" that has infected the liberal class teaches, ultimately, the importance of not offending the status quo. The "professionalism" demanded in the classroom, in newsprint, in the arts or in political discourse is code for moral disengagement.
What modern day liberals end up doing, according to Hedges is giving deference to institutions like Goldman Sachs ("a criminal enterprise") and other "power centers that long ago walked away from responsible citizenship." He includes the following industries: coal companies, chemical plants the pollute rivers or Wall Street. This allegiance has left the modern liberal class "not only useless, but despised by large segments of American society." Modern liberals (including traditional liberal institutions such as liberal churches, the press, labor unions, education and American culture generally) posit themselves as the "moral voice of the nation, but have failed miserably." (min 16). According to Hedges, modern liberals "want to empower people they've never met. They liked the poor, but they didn't like the smell of the poor." (min 20).
While evangelicals often champion a gospel of greed and personal empowerment . . . Liberals "often speak on behalf of oppressed groups they never meet, advocating utopian and unrealistic schemes to bring about peace and universal love. Neither group has much interest in testing their ideologies against reality.
What I have described above is from the first 25 minutes of the video discussion, which lasts almost three hours.

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The Other Sides

Let’s imagine the conflict known as the Civil War. It had been brewing since before the Constitution was ratified. The issues were marrow deep in American society, so much so that any attempt to address the issue of slavery was, in effect, a deal breaker for the new nation. The South made it abundantly clear that any action on the part of the North to write into the new guiding document the idea that black slaves were somehow deserving of the liberty being claimed for their white owners—and thereby signaling the end of slavery among the Thirteen Colonies—would be met with absolute refusal to play. Had the reformers, exemplified by the likes of Benjamin Franklin, tried to assert any kind of racial equality at the time, the United States would have been stillborn. Instead, they put a time limit into the document—20 years—which forbade the topic from even being discussed in Congress until that later year, at which time, presumably, the issue would come to the floor for some kind of resolution. History shows that every such attempt was met with denunciations by southern members of Congress and often with threats of secession—which by then were illegal. Make no mistake, as some revisionists might have you believe, secession was not an option and everyone who voted to ratify the Constitution knew it. Contrary to popular mythology, the original 13 states locked themselves together permanently. [More . . . ]

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FINRA arbitration abuse by the numbers

Dan Solin offers a disturbing inside view of FINRA arbitration. Given that it is binding, mandatory pre-dispute arbitration controlled by the industry being sued, it is not surprising that the table is tilted dramatically in favor of the financial industries and brokers. Here's an excerpt from Solin's article:

If you have an account with a retail broker, or are employed by one, you signed an agreement requiring you to submit all disputes to mandatory arbitration administered by FINRA. The idea of requiring investors and employees to arbitrate disputes before a tribunal appointed by the very industry being sued is deeply troubling. Because it deprives American citizens of their constitutional rights to access to the courtroom and trial by a jury of their peers, it has neither the appearance nor the reality of impartiality. Among others, Itestified before Congress and urged it to enact legislation prohibiting mandatory arbitration clauses as being fundamentally unfair.

A study I co-authored of more than 14,000 FINRA arbitration awards over a ten-year period found that investors with significant claims suing major brokerage firms could expect to recover only 12 percent of the amount claimed. It is not surprising that many investors required to submit to this process perceive it to be biased against them.

Note the $60,000 attorney fee award assessed against the man filing the arbitration claim described by Solin. Can you imagine many sane people exposing themselves to that sort of risk, especially when it is a rare court that would step in to reverse such an injustice? That's what happened in the case Solin describes, but you'll need to look long and hard to find other cases where a court disturbs a FINRA arbitrator's decision.

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Goldman Sachs resignation

At the New York Times, Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs employee explains his recent resignation:

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all. It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.
Fair enough,  but it seems as though Greg Smith hung around, participating in this system he portrays as unethical, long enough to accrue a substantial nest egg.  It would certainly seem that he could have made a financial killing in ten years at Goldman Sachs.   Nonetheless, I applaud his article because he could have simply left Goldman without writing the article, which would deny us the benefit of his observations. Then again, the article does seem like cheap talk for one who might be seeking to "repair" his career before moving to whatever comes next.    You could just imagine people looking at Smith suspiciously when he admits that he once worked for Goldman Sachs, at which point he would pull out this NYT article, turning an opportunist into a hero with a bit of deft writing.   I want to believe that the author is gallant, but my gut won't allow me to do so.   Nonetheless, I appreciate his insights.

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