Banks

 

 

Bourgeoisie

A funny, French word that defines a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture based on capital. The bourgeosie began as a part of the middle or merchant classes in feudal Europe and their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those whose power came from being born into an aristocratic family of land owners.

 

The Business Cycle 

Term used in economics to designate changes in the economy. In a Capitalist Society, the level of business activity in industrialized capitalist countries veers from high to low, taking the economy with it.

Prosperity reflects a rise in production along with a corresponding increase in employment, wages, and profits. Business executives express their optimism by increasing investment to expand production. As the upswing continues, obstacles impede further expansion. Production costs increase; shortages of raw materials appear; interest rates and wages rise increasing the cost of production and product prices. At that point, consumers react to increased prices by buying less and consumption lags behind production, creating excess inventory which cost businesses more to carry. Prices decline, adding to the problem.

With a recession, business retrenches by reducing their cost by laying-off workers which further reduces demand. Business’s return on assets craters and then the asset values themselves crater.

This leads to a period of liquidation. Business executives are pessimistic as prices and profits drop and money is hoarded, not invested. Production cutbacks and factory shutdowns occur and neighborhood economies fail as unemployment becomes widespread and depression is possible.

Economic Depression is a sustained, long-term downturn in economic activity. It is a far more severe downturn than a recession, which is seen by some economists as part of the modern business cycle.

Business Cycles adhere to the laws of God and Nature and they must be left to run their course even though working people will suffer, they will lose their jobs, their homes, their health, and their self -respect until such time as asset values hit rock bottom and entrepreneurs can find profitable deals again and recapitalize those assets.  (This sound economic theory is called Liquidation Theory and opponents of it are unpatriotic, Big Government, Tax and Spen(t), Pagan, Socialist Slut Liberals who have caused all of America’s financial problems over the years with their whining and their welfare. 

America’s Recessions: 1796-1799/1802-1804/1807-1810/1812/1815-1821/1822-1823/1825-1826/1828-1829/1833-1834/1836-1838/1839-1843/1845-1846/1847-1848/1853-1854/1857-1858/ 1860-1861/1865-1867/1869-1870/1873-1879/1882-1885/1887-1888/1890-1891/1893-1894/1895-1897/1899-1900/1902-1904/1907-1908/1910-1912/1913-1914/1918-1919/1920-1921/1923-1924/ 1926-1927/1929-1933/1937-1938/1945/1948-1949/1953-1954/1957-1958/1960-1961/  1969-1970/  1973-1975/ 1980/1981-1982/  1990-1991/  2001/ 2007-2009/2016/2019-2022/2023/2024-2026/2027-2032/2034-2036/ and then there were no more….

The Business Cycle in 5 min

 

The Austrian Business Cycle Theory Explained

 

RSA Animate – Crises of Capitalism

 

 

Conspicuous Consumption

Lavish spending on goods and services acquired for the purpose of displaying income or wealth for others to evaluate. For eons, only kings, princes and potentates consumed conspicuously but Capitalist based economies developed that entice the common man to displays of avarice as a means to attain or maintain social status.

The economy that achieves effective levels of conspicuous consumption, who can influence those not in the moneyed classes to behave as if they are, the economy where greed is fashionable, that economy has gifted its economic powers with great and expanding wealth.

Conspicuous consumption is what made America the great economy it was but, ultimately, this type of consumption destroys the people who buy into the Greed. Still, it is everything America once stood for and will stand for again.

“He, who buys what he does not need, steals from himself.” Unknown

 

Corporation

An economic ongoing concern. Also, according to the Supreme Court and God (in that order), a corporation is a person with all the rights and privileges of a citizen of the United States. And while it cannot love, it can certainly play favorites.

Corporations are the last great refinement of Capitalism. The corporation is a body granted a charter by a government that then recognizes it as a separate legal entity having its own rights, privileges, and liabilities distinct from those of its members. Corporations exist as a product of corporate law, and their rules balance the interests of the management who operate the corporation; creditors who loan it goods, services or money; shareholders who invest their capital; employees who contribute their labor; and the clients they serve (All called stakeholders).

The most crucial feature of a corporation is its limited liability. If a corporation fails, lies, cheats, steals, or attempts to subvert America, its human shareholders normally stand to lose only their investment, creditors their debt, and employees their jobs. Corporations are recognized as having rights and responsibilities, like people. but without the moral and ethical responsibilities of people.

For example, corporations may be responsible for human rights violations but only the government can hold them accountable and that in a very limited way, particularly if they are incorporated outside the country.

Even accountability is moot because all politicians who representative the people in government are beholding to corporations so there is little accountability.

And when corporations determine there is economic opportunity outside of the U.S. they may move offshore in order to take advantage of these opportunities leaving workers, small business, and local communities behind to carry the burden of their departure.

“Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.” A. Bierce

What is a Corporation?  

Corporation and the 14th Amendment     

 

 

Murray Hill Incorporated is Running for Congress

 

Corporation Filing to Run for Congress in Republican Primary, Thanks to GOP Backed SCotUS      

 

Can a Company Run for Congress?

Corporations Are People Too

“Corporations Aren’t People” – Corporate Personhood Protest     

 

Creative Destruction

Capitalists birthed this deliciously theological-economic concept that is bereft of moral or ethical consequences. Similar in development to dog-eat dog and bop-til-you-drop.

At its best, creative destruction is a process of dynamic economic transformation that accompanies radical innovation. In a highly competitive environment, continuous innovation by entrepreneurs introduces new products, processes, and services that create sustained long-term economic growth. But this activity tends to destroy the value of established companies and processes that once enjoyed some degree of competitive advantage prior to the innovation and when the lifeblood of any enterprise, money, dries up, the company or process dies.

Alan Greenspan on Creative Destruction

 

Egalitarianism

A remnant of a Socialist age, this term is no longer used in Capitalist circles. Egalitarianism has two distinct definitions. It is either a political doctrine that holds that all people should be treated as equals and have the same political, economic, social, and civil rights or as a social philosophy advocating the removal of economic inequalities among people.

In Capitalism, some rise, but to support this rise, a great many gravitate to lower economic classes. Those who struggle somewhat successfully land in the middle class, a class supportive and critical to capitalism in that the working, middle class delivers the demand that creates upper class wealth and the effort that generates products the upper class profit from.

When humanity existed primarily in hunter-gatherer societies, those societies tended to be egalitarian. That was the natural order of those societies. Since the Industrial Revolution and the birth of industrial Capitalism, and then through various subsequent technological revolutions, society has been driven by greed to renounce egalitarianism which is considered repellant to capitalists and yet somehow the poorer, the deluded followers of Capitalists repudiate the significant advantages of social egalitarianism.

It is pointed out regularly that economic systems don’t kill people, their bought and paid for political leaders do.

 

Entrepreneur

Venture or enterprise owner who assumes significant responsibility for the inherent risks and for the outcome from combining land, labor, and capital to create and market new goods or services for profit. Entrepreneurship is not to be confused with the day to day management of a venture as the risks and rewards of this effort are muted.

At one time, the life of the entrepreneur was frought with risk and failure could be life changing. By the late twentieth century American entrepreneurs generally saddled their government with risk and others with risk mitigation and if excessinve, they reduced their risk by enticing the government to socialize it.

Sadly, in today’s America, the entrepreneur is mostly a copycat, an imitator, or even a franchisee.

“I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don’t force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man’s right to reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment.” J. Galt

“I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.” J. Galt (…and this guy had no trouble getting dates?)

“Greed is Good.” I.F. Boesky (and Gordon Gecko)

Greed is Good   

 

Tax Loopholes, Tax Shelters:  

 

Finance

The art of high mathematics utilized to turn a profit. When America was making things, its best and brightest were engineers and other producers of goods and services. By the end of the First Republic most talent shifted to Finance where the money was.

Finance deals with the concepts of time, money and risk and how they are interrelated and how to separate time and money from management and workers. But fundamentally more important, Finance is the richly theological practice of acquiring the lion’s share in a series of complex business transactions.

At the end of the First Republic, Finance became the arcane art (magic) of repackaging financial instruments for resale to those who could never understand the underlying value in the deal. The purpose of these transactions is to suck money from the middle class and others in order to enrich powerful insiders , the rich.

Subprime Banking Mess

 

Free Enterprise

An environment of unrestrained markets without government interference, regulation or subsidy. This is much like allowing the school bully on the school playground bereft of teachers or other adults.

“That’s free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing — the truly democratic thing about it – is that you don’t even have to be a player to lose.” B. Ehrenreich

American Free Enterprise

 

Free Trade

Oxymoron. When trade is free, where is the value? Free Trade is where traders are free act and transact without restraint from outside forces or a government. Ostensibly, this permits trading partners unlimited mutual gain (but not necessarily equal gain) from trade of goods and services.

Price is the sole determinant of resource allocation so in theory, prices reflect true supply and demand, all other things being equal. Capitalist free traders believe that artificial prices, caused by protectionist trade policies by government is unnatural and intervenes in the marketplace through price adjustments and supply restrictions. This is evil, unnatural, and wrong as any intervention in trade increases the cost of goods and services creating an inefficient marketplace.

 

Globalization

An ongoing plot by international Communists by which lower operating cost regional economies, societies, and cultures are integrated into a globe-spanning commercial supply network creating artificial advantages that can only be offset by economic conquest of those countries.

Corporations that plan effectively and control operations in low cost countries can generate exceedingly high profits and those efforts sometimes manage to raise the standard of living in poorer countries, but that is not the goal.

Globalization tends to be the last desperate act of corporations losing their valuation due to declining margins.

 

Greed

Man’s great moral and ethical battleground. Greed is the excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of money, wealth, and/or power. It was once generally considered a vice, but today, greed has climbed the Christian greatest hits chart of the deadly sins or vices, dropping the Cardinal and Capital along the way. Greed is taught in schools, in homes, in businesses, and in Church, so it is easy to see how it became so necessary.

Greed turned Christmas, that venerable old holiday that celebrates the birth of our Capitalist-Christian Messiah, into a four season gift-giving celebration of commerce. Most of the world’s businesses will fail if Christmas sales are down.

“There must be more to life than having everything.” M. Sendak

“We seek the lion’s share, never knowing why.” Styx

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” E. Abbey

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not every man’s greed.” M.K. Gandhi

Bill Maher – New Rules – Greed

The Corporate Machine  

The Secret Riches Visualization Tool      

Attract Money and Abundance Today Affirmations  

 

The Invisible Hand

Created by Capitalist Saint Adam Smith, the concept has been generalized beyond his original treatise.  Milton Friedman, a late great and noted business apostle and Nobel Prize winner in economics, once called Smith’s Invisible Hand “the possibility of cooperation without coercion”.

The Invisible Hand is a natural inclination not a social mechanism. The concept is that If each consumer is allowed to choose freely what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely what to sell and how to produce it, the market will settle on a product’s perfect distribution and price such that it is beneficial to every member of a community and hence to the community as a whole. This wonderful fable is listened to by children around the world before going to sleep at night.

The Invisible Hand is the self-interest that drives actors to beneficial behavior. Would that this were true. With this belief, efficient production methods are adopted to maximize profits and lower prices maximize revenue through gains in market share caused by undercutting competitors. Investors then invest in those industries most urgently needed to maximize returns, and withdraw capital from those less efficient thus magically creating value. It then follows that each generation prepares for the most needed (and therefore most remunerative) careers. That explains the glut of lawyers and arbitragers.

To add to the arcane nature of the term, all of these effects take place dynamically and automatically and in the best interest of society, particularly if you define society as those who benefit most. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith provides an example. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

This is a magnificent sales pitch, full of glory and greatness, with much to commend it but the facts. Human nature is driven by capitalist greed and survival instincts, both integral in the capitalist equation. It is only when there is enforcement of laws put on the books because of past abuses that the now less visible hand truly works its magic.

Milton Friedman on the Invisible Hand  

 

Labor Unions

A radical Socialist organization of workers who used the soft-headedness of Progressives in the United States to gain a beachhead against the Capitalist forces for good.

The reputed goal of unions are to work together to achieve common goals in key areas of commerce, such as working conditions and wages. Trade union leadership work hard and illegally to gain unfair advantage and then they bargain unfairly and for a fee with employers on behalf of union members. The result of their “bargain” is a labor contract (Collective bargaining).

Negotiations may include discussions on wages, work rules, complaint procedures, rules governing hiring, firing and promotion of workers, benefits, workplace safety and policies. The agreements negotiated are binding on the rank and file and the employer and in some cases on other non-member workers.

By late in the Industrial Revolution, labor unions began to dominate the First Republic because of the lack of skill sets necessary to perform jobs. That changed with the over abundance of workers that moved from farm economies to city-based jobs, shifting bargaining power to the employers  and causing workers to lose their unfailry won gains.

In the latter stages of the First Republic, the labor movement gained traction and with Progressives in power, they earned U.S. Government support but from that moment through the end of the FIrst Republic, Capitalists worked unceasing to destroy unions. By 2084, there was but one union left in America and plans were far along to eliminate the need for even one.

In 2031, in a speech to foreign consumer groups at the World Bank, Presidential nominee, Andrew Crelli remarked that “Workers are now and will forever be America’s weakest link in this competitive global economy. If our economy is ever to improve, the total lifecycle cost of the vast and unproductive workforce must be totally eliminated from our ledgers. This I vow to do.”

“The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting working people of all nations and tongues and kindred.” A. Lincoln

“If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men to capitalize their labor.” F.L. Wright

A Brief History of Labor Unions      

 

Laissez Faire Capitalism

The cry of the capitalist. “Leave us the hell alone”. (See Free Trade and Free Enterprise) This concept askes commerce to be free of government restriction, especially restrictions in the form of tariffs and government monopolies. The phrase is French and literally means “let do,” though it broadly implies let it be or leave it alone. It supports a widely held misconception that only governments screw things up when in fact, (multiple economic depressions and recessions prove that) only the government is never forgiven for screwing things up.

 

Profit

A child of greed. Profit is the making of gain in business activity for the benefit of the owners. The word comes from Latin meaning “to make progress”. For too many in today’s society, profit is their reason for being.

“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” T. S. Eliot

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” M.L. King

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak.” J. Leno

 

Proletariat

In Latin, proletarius, a citizen of the lowest class, it is a term used to identify a lower social class, originally those who had no wealth other than their sons. Marx used the term to define the working class giving them a name that President Crelli would target for extinctionwith in his Circle of Life legislation.

 

Return on Investment

In finance, rate of return, also known as return on investment (ROI) is the ratio of money gained or lost (whether realized or unrealized) on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. The amount of money gained or lost may be referred to as interest, profit/loss, gain/loss, or net income/loss; you can call it whatever you want as long as it’s yours.

ROI is usually expressed as a percentage rather than a fraction. When the Financial Supreme Court hand picked by President Crelli decided a case that defined people as assets, it opened the door for laws requiring everyone provide economic value or be deemed waste and subject to removal.

 

Selling

Trust In the days after activist judges were eliminated from the Supreme Court, there were few who remembered how activist conservative judges in the late 19th century created the groundwork for the elimination of the republic, replacing it with a autocratic, capitalist plutocracy.

When the Constitution of the United States was written, the status of corporations wasn’t addressed, leaving that to the States to control. You see, businessmen in the colonies hated corporations because they existed only to make their English shareholders wealthy and to fund King George’s armies.

Usually limited to a specific purpose for a specific period of time, because of the distrust, corporations were put on short leashes. But when the Industrial Revolution arrived in America, followed closely by rampant government spending during the Civil War to insure a Northern victory, wealth became concentrated in the hands of those uniquely situated to take advantage of the Union needs and who saw the economic terrain better. These men were loosely confederated and history has termed them Robber Barons.

Robber Barons were American men who, to further their own wealth and power created vast business unions to forestall competition and gave rise to unions of laborers who they attempted to crush. In support of the war effort, railroads grew thanks to huge government outlays and westward expansion created great opportunities for increased supply and demand. Illegal immigrants were proselytized in Europe to help build the railroads and fund the enormous land grants offered to the railroads by the Lincoln government desperate to defeat the Confederacy.

Iron proved inadequate and soon steel was required. Oil was discovered and quickly expanded to commercial levels, wealth accumulating driving greater financial requirements and thus large financial institutions materialized and grew. These corporations though were limited by state charters and the Federal government, according to the strict interpretation of the Constitution had nothing to do with them.

Logistics required that large corporations operate across multiple states and this was forbidden so Rockefeller, supported by vast legal teams that only corporations could afford, evaded the law and created trusts (unions of business owners) that went toe to toe with lesser funded opponents with the support of activist judges who earned their experience working for corporations.

During the Reconstruction era ruled over by Republicans, the 14th Amendment, the illegal amendment was passed that gave slaves access to the Bill of Rights. But corporations were involved and with hordes of lawyers and the judges on their payroll, slowly, over a period of twenty years Republican packed courts ruled, case after court case, expanding the limits of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ironically, few of those

Supreme Court cases involved slaves’ rights, hundreds were adjudicated in favor of corporations until there evolved a body of law that culminated in one case that was so close to defining a corporation a person that the Republican Supreme court treated all subsequent cases as if that case had actually made that declaration.

Limited liability corporations were now people. America freed the slaves only to allow an entity that is owned to become a person. But there was great benefit for that person so those rulings stand today. Just as progressives broke illegal corporate Trusts, nimble corporations no longer needed them thanks to corporate personhood and activist conservative judges.

Corporations were people like you and me; they had the protection of the Bill of Rights, protections the founding fathers never, ever considered for them. Though limited liabilities corporate shareholders were already from crime and financial losses, they now had the additional protections of the Bill of Rights. No state can pass regulations against them that corporations won’t appeal on Federal 14th Amendment rights that bridge over to first, fourth, fifth, and who knows, with private corporate armies, second amendment rights as well.

Judged as people, in the early 21st century, the rights of corporations were expanded by another Republican Supreme Court to allow for unlimited funding of political candidates. Possibly, if corporations meet the other requirements, they would be allowed to run for President or Congress. In fact, President Crelli, backed by the unlimited funding of his business, Crelli Enterprises and others bought the Presidency in 2032, his purpose to ensure that business would remain too big to fail while the American Republic obviously wasn’t. Because of trusted conservative activist judges, freedom and the Republic died.

 

Waste

Anything or anyone that incurs cost beyond their value is waste. To improve profits, waste must be eliminated. So be attentive in school, learn and work hard to create value, or else.

 

Worth or Net Worth

Calculated as total assets minus total liabilities of an individual or a company. For a company, this is referred to as book value.

In personal finance, net worth (or wealth or worth or Economic Value) refers to an individual’s net economic position. On a corporate or individual balance sheet, if the accumulated losses are more than the shareholder’s equity, there is unsustainable negative net worth. All societies value worth. In America, worth is the basis for life and death. If you have worth, the economy and thus society is better served to have you contributing, if you lack worth or worth is declining, society has the right to cut its losses.

Chris Rock about Wealth

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.” J. Goethe

“The final arbiter of what a man is worth is the economic value he brings to life.” A Crelli