Vulture Capitalists
— Whose US oligarchs will win, and how do we measure standards of living
The Rise & Fall of Suckers
If you think about it, the money-mongers — call ’em what they are, vulture capitalists — have got the system so well-pegged each succeeding generation seems to lose their inheritances gotten from their parents. In a belief they’re doing the right thing, these inheritance recipients — inexperienced, often blind — invest into America’s stock market.
After some degree of comfort, perhaps sharing a feeling they’re participating in the ‘American Way,’ this crop of rookie investors might see a small or modest return. But eventually the generational market crash will hit ’em. You may have seen the sidebar investment expert on television politely label this a “correction.” More appropriately, it is a “taking!”
What happens is once the vultures establish long positions into a stock, betting the share price will go up, boiler room operations and craftily-planted media hype set-ups then encourage people to buy.
When the market has topped out, the vultures then reverse their long positions into short positions, betting the share price will go down. Once the short positions are well-established, orders are barked out to the boiler room operations to encourage “selling” instead of buying. Usually negative press helps to spur the selling action. The market then tanks and people, especially the newbies, take huge losses on their investment.
Dot Com Bubble
An excellent case study for this would be the behavior of tech stocks during ‘The Dot Com Bubble’ covering the period 1995 to 2000. Excessive speculation on technology investments paralleled the Baby Boomer generation coming into inheritance money.
Eventually, having achieved its plateau, the tech market saw three successive weeks of severe early-in-the-week losses (vulture experts were selling and converting long into short positions), followed by modest Thursday and Friday gains resulting from innocents thinking they were taking advantage of ‘dips in the market.’
Finally, at the conclusion of the third week of volatility, after the closing Friday bell, Goldman Sachs announced it divested all its tech stock positions. Prior to the opening bell on Monday, Mark Morbius, a European investment guru of similar stature, made the same kind of an announcement. Folks got squeezed! To the innocent investor, mostly Baby Boomers using freshly-minted inheritance money, this amounted to five to the face and they got knocked to the mat never to recover.
And The Beat Goes On …
Unfortunately, people hold short attention spans. These days The Savings & Loans Scandal of the first Bush Administration in the ’80s, the Dot Com Bubble of the late-’90s are barely ever discussed. These got trumped by the 2008 Speculative Real Estate investment imbroglio resulting in ‘Big Banking’ getting bailed out by the federal government, this while small folk — America’s middle class — got taken to the cleaners and poor folk were left clinging living in a dangerous underground economy where drug deals and scratch tickets became the means of hope.
Vulture capitalist manipulators and a compliant media know full well the money-grabbing game and how it repeats, led by oligarch-induced consultants and lobbyists who hold power and sway over donor-sensitive politicians always concerned about money for re-election.
Of course, today, a generation later, here we are with the Covid-19 economy is in play:
GDP (Godlike) vs. Median Age (Virtually Unknown)
There are multiple reasons why US politicians hold a 15–20% approval rating coupled to a 95% re-election rate. Among them is they pay more attention to the fat cats at the top, the S&P and Dow Jones indicators and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP — monetary value of goods and services). They concentrate way less on how people are actually doing in life (see 2014 Princeton Study on Oligarchy). It is corporate money that enables our politicians to keep getting elected over and over, despite their performance governing for the people.
Rather than rely upon on a nation’s GDP, a better indicator for how people are doing in life would be the Median Age Index of Nations (MAIN). Politicians woefully ignore the MAIN. Corporate media only reports about the GDP. It’s like the MAIN has become a guilt trip seemingly meant to require silence.
The MAIN average of nations where America conducts bombing campaigns (current Google stats) is 21.7: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. During Barack Obama’s last year in power America nearly ran out of bombs, dropping 26,197 of ’em mostly on poor folk. Donald Trump continues and is building even more bombs. Also noteworthy is both the Obama and Trump administrations saw 85 to 85% of all new wealth generated go to those already the wealthiest.
In America, our median age is 38. For all of our wealth, America ranks 61st internationally. Most African nations range 15 to 20-aged medians! Interestingly, the Democratic Socialist Nordic nations average at 42 and Democratic Socialist Cuba checks in at 42.
Please view closely the video included in the below link — thanks!
A Final Point
America, the world, needs the politics of Bernie Sanders. It is a shame, indeed a crime, that America’s political system was rigged against him and the people who backed his political movement. Indeed, very few will enjoy the corporate transition into fascism.
Keep in mind that the very best way to enslave people is to make them think they are free.
