Jim Rogers is an expatriate American investor and financial commentator based in Singapore. He wrote in a 2004 article titled “The Rise of Red Capitalism”
https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2009/09/how-can-chinas-stimulus-plan-be-working.html
How can China’s stimulus plan be working so well, when ours is barely working at all?
ttp://www.webofdebt.com/articles/secret_of_china.php
THE SECRET OF CHINA’S MIRACLE ECONOMY:
THE GOVERNMENT OWNS THE BANKS RATHER THAN THE REVERSE
Ellen Brown, August 17th, 2009
www.webofdebt.com/articles/secret_of_china.php
“The
banks -- hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis
that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on
Capitol Hill. They frankly own the place.”
-- U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Party Whip, April 30, 2009
While
the U.S. spends trillions of dollars to bail out its banking system,
leaving its economy to languish, China is being called a “miracle
economy” that has decoupled from the rest of the world. As the rest of
the world sinks into the worst recession since the 1930s, China has
maintained a phenomenal 8% annual growth rate. Those are the reports,
but commentators are dubious. They ask how that growth is possible, when
other countries relying heavily on exports have suffered major
downturns and remain in the doldrums. Economist Richard Wolff
skeptically observes:
We now have a situation in the world where
we have a global capitalist crisis. Everywhere, consumption is down.
Everywhere, people are buying fewer goods, including goods from China.
How is it possible that in that society, so dependent on the world
economy, they could now have an explosive growth? Their stock market is
now 100 percent higher than at its low -- nothing remotely like that
hardly anywhere in the world, certainly not in the United States or
Europe. How is that possible? In order to believe what the Chinese are
saying, you would have to agree that in a matter of months, at most a
year, no more, they have been able to transform their economy from an
export-based powerhouse to a domestically focused industrial engine.
Nowhere in the world has that ever taken less than decades.”
How
can China’s stimulus plan be working so well, when ours is barely
working at all? The answer may be simple: China has not let its banking
system run roughshod over its productive economy. Chinese banks work for
the people rather than the reverse. So says Samah El-Shahat, a
presenter for Al Jazeera English who has a doctorate in economics from
the University of London. In an August 10 article titled “China Puts
People Before Banks,” she writes:
“China is the one leading
economy where the divide – the disconnect between its financial sector
and the world normal Chinese people and their businesses inhabit –
doesn’t exist. Both worlds are booming again and this is due to the way
the government handled its banks. China hasn’t allowed its banking
sector to become so powerful, so influential, and so big that it can
call the shots or highjack the bailout.
[...]
Jim Rogers is an expatriate American investor and financial commentator
based in Singapore. He wrote in a 2004 article titled “The Rise of Red
Capitalism”:
“Some of the best capitalists in the world live and
work in Communist China. . . . No matter how long China’s leaders
persist in calling themselves Communists, they seem quite intent on
creating the world’s dominant capitalist economy.”
Meanwhile, the
U.S. has sunk into what Rogers calls “socialism for the rich.” When
ordinary U.S. businesses go bankrupt, they are left to deal with the
asphalt jungle on their own; but when banks considered “too big to fail”
go bankrupt, we the taxpayers pay the losses while the banks’ owners
keep the profits and are allowed to continue speculating with them. The
bailout of Wall Street with taxpayer money represents a radical
departure from capitalist principles, one that has changed the face of
the American economy. The capitalism we were taught in school involved
Mom and Pop stores, single-family farms, and small entrepreneurs
competing on a level playing field. The government’s role was to set the
rules and make sure everyone played fair. But that is not the sort of
capitalism we have today. The Mom and Pop stores have been squeezed out
by giant chain stores and mega-industries; the small private farms have
been bought up by multinational agribusinesses; and Wall Street banks
have gotten so powerful that Congressmen are complaining that the banks
now own Congress. Giant banks and corporations have rewritten the rules
for their own ends. Healthy competition has been replaced by a form of
predator capitalism in which small fish are systematically swallowed up
by sharks. The result has been an ever-widening gap between rich and
poor that represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history.
The Best of Both Worlds
The
Chinese solution to a failed banking system would be to nationalize the
banks themselves, not just their bad debts. If the U.S. were to adopt
that approach, we the people would actually get something of value for
our investment – a stable and accountable banking system that belongs to
the people. If the word “nationalize” sounds un-American, think
“publicly-owned and operated for the benefit of the public,” like public
libraries, public parks, and public courts. We need to get our dollars
out of Wall Street and back on Main Street, and we can do that only by
breaking up our out-of-control private banking monopoly and returning
control over money and credit to the people themselves. If the Chinese
can have the best of both worlds, so can we.
Ellen Brown
developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation
in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills
to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows
how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the
people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier
books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from “the
money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s
Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate
Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are
www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.
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