Scott SoCal wrote:aphronesis wrote:@scott,
I'll try to get back to last nights posts tonight, but I'm curious why you would present these (offer, acceptance) and other things as if they occur in a neutral vacuum? Independent of say state, military and material pressures?
I'm not suggesting anything occurs in a neutral vacuum. However this...
There is currently an ongoing immigration crisis of epoch making proportions from impoverished and war torn zones into Europe. There is a concentration of wealth among the financial lords, while entire nations are on the brink of economic collapse, because lending institutions want their pound of flesh.
is an over-simplification to a staggering degree. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what Rhub thinks the issue is.
Throwing ones hands up and stating..."it's the fault of bankers" is perhaps the neutral vacuum you suggest.
An interesting perspective is John Perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hitman". The model was for him to go in with offers of lots of cash to the sitting government of whatever country in order for them to upgrade infrastructure in order to improve their economy. Lots of "incentives" were handed out along with sideshow after slideshow of how the economic model worked. Sold!
Inevitably, American corporations are contracted to do the work. The infrastructure gets updated and... nothing. The bill comes due and then Greece happens. All that sparkling new infrastructure and other public resources such as water, airports, ports gets sold off to pay *some of* the debt. Everybody wins except anyone living in said country.
And because the scam is obvious, any leader that hesitates gets a visit from the CIA and is told the good news. Get rich and screw everyone else, or you and your family are gone. Think Gaddafi et al and what happened in Brazil.
The banks are certainly part of it, and closer to home, sub-prime housing loans were a small scale version of the same thing. But there's a lot of "winners" in this scenario and it certainly helps further some political objectives.
John Swanson