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The Neoliberal Looting of America
This was the heading of an article in today’s (2 July 2020) New York Times that caught my eye and imagination, which I would very much like to reflect more upon and share with you.
But, first, a bit of Nota bene is Called For!
It is so sad to see a country with the potential to be a force for good, a beacon of hope to many, sinking so low, isolated,fearful, hopeless, in despair, abject poverty side by side with the billionaires, angry, xenophobic, and in the grip of mental and physical ill health and suicidal tendencies.
This should not have been so, should America have chosen wisdom and the common good, rather than being fooled into worshipping the nonsensical and false belief in its ‘exceptionalism’.
And should they have chosen the path of wisdom and the common good, then, the US would have been great already, and thus, there would have been no need to rely on Donald Trump to Make the US Great Again!!
And finally, there are, for sure, many reasons why Americans are being looted. But, to my mind, paraphrasing the words of John Ruskin, it is all because of ‘Bastard Neoliberal Economics.’
Photo:seekingalpha.com
The Destruction of our World and the lies of Milton Friedman
The Neoliberal Road to Serfdom
People’s Tragedy: Neoliberal Legacy of Thatcher and Reagan
Neoliberalism destroys human potential and devastates values-led education
Neoliberalism and the rise in global loneliness, depression and suicide
Why are people in the US living shorter lives?
Economic Growth: The Index of Misery
And
This must never be forgotten, that neoliberal teaching and values have churned out an army
of amoral, inhumane and narcissistic leadership
Photo: Financial Times
...And now reverting back to the article I had mentioned above:
The Neoliberal Looting of America
By Mehrsa Baradaran, Via The New York Times*
“It’s hard to separate what’s good for the United States and what’s good for Bank of America,” said its former chief executive, Ken Lewis, in 2009. That was hardly true at the time, but the current crisis has revealed that the health of the finance industry and stock market is completely disconnected from the actual financial health of the American people. As inequality, unemployment and evictions climb, the Dow Jones surges right alongside them — one line compounding suffering, the other compounding returns for investors.
One reason is that an ideological coup quietly transformed our society over the last 50 years, raising the fortunes of the financial economy — and its agents like private equity firms — at the expense of the real economy experienced by most Americans.
The roots of this intellectual takeover can be traced to a backlash against socialism in Cold War Europe. The Austrian School economist Friedrich A. Hayek was perhaps the most influential leader of that movement, denouncing governments that chased “the mirage of social justice.” Only free markets can allocate resources fairly and reward individuals based on what they deserve, reasoned Hayek. The ideology — known as neoliberalism — was especially potent because it disguised itself as a neutral statement of economics rather than just another theory. Only unfettered markets, the theory argued, could ensure justice and freedom because only the profit motive could dispassionately pick winners and losers based on their contribution to the economy.
Neoliberalism leapt from economics departments into American politics in the 1960s, where it fused with conservative anti-communist ideas and then quickly spread throughout universities, law schools, legislatures and courts. By the 1980s, neoliberalism was triumphant in policy, leading to tax cuts, deregulation and privatization of public functions including schools, pensions and infrastructure. The governing logic held that corporations could do just about everything better than the government could. The result, as President Ronald Reagan said, was to unleash “the magic of the marketplace.”
The magic of the market did in fact turn everything into gold — for wealthy investors. Neoliberalism led to deregulation in every sector, a winner-take-all, debt-fueled market and a growing cultural acceptance of purely profit-driven corporate managers. These conditions were a perfect breeding ground for the private equity industry, then known as “leveraged buyout” firms. Such firms took advantage of the new market for high-yield debt (better known as junk bonds) to buy and break up American conglomerates, capturing unprecedented wealth in fewer hands. The private equity industry embodies the neoliberal movement’s values, while exposing its inherent logic.
Private equity firms use money provided by institutional investors like pension funds and university endowments to take over and restructure companies or industries. Private equity touches practically every sector, from housing to health care to retail. In pursuit of maximum returns, such firms have squeezed businesses for every last drop of profit, cutting jobs, pensions and salaries where possible. The debt-laden buyouts privatize gains when they work, and socialize losses when they don’t, driving previously healthy firms to bankruptcy and leaving many others permanently hobbled. The list of private equity’s victims has grown even longer in the past year, adding J. Crew, Toys ‘R’ Us, Hertz and more.
In the last decade, private equity management has led to approximately 1.3 million job losses due to retail bankruptcies and liquidation. Beyond the companies directly controlled by private equity, the threat of being the next takeover target has most likely led other companies to pre-emptively cut wages and jobs to avoid being the weakest prey. Amid the outbreak of street protests in June, a satirical headline in The Onion put it best: “Protesters Criticized for Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First.” Yet the private equity takeover is not technically looting because it has been made perfectly legal, and even encouraged, by policymakers.
According to industry experts, 2019 was one of the most successful years for private equity to date, with $919 billion in funds raised. The private equity executives themselves can also garner tremendous riches. Their standard fee structure involves collecting around 2 percent of the investor money they manage annually, and then 20 percent of any profits above an agreed-upon level. This lucrative arrangement also lets them tap into the very favorable “carried interest” tax loophole, allowing them to pay much lower capital gains tax rates on their earnings, rather than normal income taxes like most people.
An examination of the recent history of private equity disproves the neoliberal myth that profit incentives produce the best outcomes for society. The passage of time has debunked another such myth: that deregulating industries would generate more vibrant competition and benefit consumers. Unregulated market competition actually led to market consolidation instead. Would-be monopolies squeezed competitors, accrued political power, lobbied for even more deregulation and ultimately drove out any rivals, leading inexorably to entrenched political power. Instead of a thriving market of small-firm competition, free market ideology led to a few big winners dominating the rest.
Take the banking sector. For most of American history, banks were considered a public privilege with duties to promote the “best interest of the community.” If a bank wanted to merge or grow or offer new services, the regulators often denied the request either because a community could lose a bank branch or because the new product was too risky. During the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and ’90s, Congress and bank regulators loosened the rules, allowing a handful of megabanks to swallow up thousands of small banks.
Today, five banks control nearly half of all bank assets. Fees paid by low-income Americans have increased, services have been curtailed and many low-income communities have lost their only bank. When federally subsidized banks left low-income communities, vulture-like fringe lenders — payday, title, tax-refund lenders — filled the void. As it turns out, private equity firms are invested in some of the largest payday lenders in the country.
Faith in market magic was so entrenched that even the 2008 financial crisis did not fully expose the myth: We witnessed the federal government pick up all the risks that markets could not manage and Congress and the Federal Reserve save the banking sector ostensibly on behalf of the people. Neoliberal deregulation was premised on the theory that the invisible hand of the market would discipline risky banks without the need for government oversight. Even a former Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, the most committed free market fundamentalist of the era, admitted in the understatement of the century, that “I made a mistake.”
We can start fixing the big flaws propagated over the last half century by taxing the largest fortunes, breaking up large banks and imposing market rules that prohibit the predatory behaviors of private equity firms.
Public markets can take over the places that private markets have failed to adequately serve. Federal or state agencies can provide essential services like banking, health care, internet access, transportation and housing at cost through a public option. Historically, road maintenance, mail delivery, police and other services are not left to the market, but provided directly by the government. Private markets can still compete, but basic services are guaranteed to everyone.
And we can move beyond the myths of neoliberalism that have led us here. We can have competitive and prosperous markets, but our focus should be on ensuring human dignity, thriving families and healthy communities. When those are in conflict, we should choose flourishing communities over profits.”
*Mehrsa Baradaran is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap.”
The above article was first published in The New York Times on 2 July 2020.
Ten Steps to Right the Wrongs of Neoliberalism and the Looting of the World
‘Every move you make, every breath you take leaves its mark on our world'
Photo:EOCA's Spring 2020 Newsletter
The remarkable characteristic of our chaotic and crisis riddled world today is their deepening and continuity
Crisis after Crisis: Financial Crisis. Credit and Banking Crisis. Environmental and Ecological Crisis. Biodiversity Crisis. Epidemic and Pandemic Crisis. Housing Crisis. Health and Well-being Crisis. Education Crisis. Spiritual and Moral Crisis. Trust and Trusting Crisis. Indifference Crisis. Fake, Fake News and Faking Crisis. Reality Crisis. Populism and Fascism Crisis,...all of them leading ours to be a generalized "time of crisis."
At a time of profound crises there must be an opportunity for new vision, new understanding and new thinking. There is a desperate need for new practical ways of relating in an increasingly interdependent global community: a time to re-introduce spirituality, ethics, civility, kindness, humanity and the common good into the debate on globalisation, economics, politics, business, education, international relation and much more.
Surely the time is now to rise and challenge the falsehood and the inhumanity of the ideology (Neoliberalism) that since the early 1980s has cheated and humiliated us by monetising all aspects of our lives, and has stopped us from knowing what it means to be human.
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‘THEIR leaves clothed Adam and Eve; their roots were used by the Maasai people’s god to shuttle the first cattle from heaven to Earth; and according to an Indonesian story, two gods carved the first couple from their wood. The presence of fig trees in numerous origin myths is down to more than coincidence. They have shaped our world since long before the dawn of humanity, and have fed us and our imaginations for millennia. Now, as the world warms and forests fall, these extraordinary trees could help us to restore life to deforested landscapes.
It’s all because fig trees cut a curious deal with tiny wasps back when dinosaurs still roamed. Thanks to this, they sustain far more biodiversity than other trees. Today, there are more than 750 species of Ficus, each of which relies on its own wasp species to pollinate its flowers. In turn, the wasps can only breed inside the figs of their partner tree. Genetic studies suggest that this remarkable codependency is at least 80 million years old.’- Tree of life: How figs built the world and will help save it
Trees of Life, Trees of Knowledge- Ecology and Mythology of the Fig Tree
Ancient Buddha head in the fig tree at Wat Mahathat in the historic city of Ayutthaya, Thailand.-Photo:Picfair
The tree that shaped human history
By Mike Shanahan, Via BBC Earth
‘Fig trees have not only witnessed history but have shaped it and they could even enrich our future.’
Over 2,000 years ago, an important tree had one of its branches removed on the order of Indian emperor Ashoka the Great. It was under this very tree that the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment. Ashoka bestowed kingship on the branch, and planted it in a thick-rimmed solid gold vase.
He then took the branch over mountains and down the Ganges River to the Bay of Bengal. There, his daughter carried it aboard a ship and sailed for Sri Lanka to present it to the king. Ashoka loved the plant so much that he shed tears as he watched it leave.
This story, from the epic poem The Mahavamsa, is about a kind of fig tree scientists call Ficus religiosa. True to its name, an unbroken line of devotion towards it stretches back to thousands of years before Ashoka's time.
But F. religiosa is not alone. It is just one of more than 750 fig species. No other plants have held such sway over human imagination. They feature in every major religion and have influenced kings and queens, scientists and soldiers. They played roles in human evolution and the dawn of civilisation. These trees have not only witnessed history; they have shaped it. If we play it right, they could even enrich our future…’- Continue to read
Discover more:
The Fig Tree Fed Ancient Civilizations and Feeds Modern Gardeners Today*
Plants and fruit trees of the garden of Eden
Figs - Ficus carica. This is the easiest one to identify as it is mentioned in Genesis 3:7
‘…And the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons…-
Photo and text: PLANTS AND FRUIT TREES OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN
‘The Fig Tree that grows in today’s fruit garden is a tropical-like crop that matures figs in the Summer even in Northern States with a cold hardy character unknown until the last decade. Hybrid fig trees have been shown to survive temperatures of zero degrees in outside gardens and re-grow to produce various colored fig fruit in the Summer, colored, green, brown, black, blue, purple, white and yellow – tasty and delicious. The fig is tree ripe when the shape of the fig sags and is sweetest when picked to dry in the sun. The dried fig contains considerable sugar and can be used as fig newtons, fig candy or fig rolls. The cold hardy character of the fig means that the fig tree can be extensively grown when properly mulched throughout the U.S.
The fig tree was one of the ancient fruits recorded in the Bible along with the pomegranate, olive, grape and date palm that fed ancient civilizations reliably. A famous Bible reference in the Gospels of Matthew & Mark notes that Jesus cursed a fig tree, and the Apostle Peter noted that because the fig tree had no available figs to eat, the fig tree instantly withered. Many Bible Scriptures cite the fig tree leafing out as being a sign of Summer and also a sign of the apocalypse when Jesus returns to earth to rapture His Christian followers. The fig tree is highly productive and produces several waves of fig ripening, if the figs are picked often from the tree. In Europe the fig is sold fresh at markets or dried into fig bars or sold in cafes as fig desserts. The great problem with fig trees is the short shelf life of the fig after harvest, but drying the fig is an excellent alternative to spoiling.
Wildlife animals love to eat figs especially birds and many fig growers cover their trees with netting to thwart wildlife game. Farmers have known in the South that planting a fig tree in a pig lot will provide cheap food to fatten hogs. The fig tree is easy to grow and appears to favor sandy soil of low fertility. The greatest threat to fig trees is the old garden site that grows tomatoes and peppers where the nematode (eelworm) thrives in large populations. The nematode goes directly into the soft fleshy roots of the fig tree causing the fig tree to decline and the nematode can even crawl up into the bark to eat the fig leaf or fig fruit.
ANCIENT FIG TREES THROUGH HISTORY
The fig tree, ‘Ficus carica,’ possibly originated in Northern Asia according to archeological fossil records. Spanish missionaries brought it to the United States in 1520. Historical Sumerian tablets record the use and consumption of figs in 2500 BC. In Greek mythology, the fig figures prominently as a gift of Demeter to Dionysus and as having received the blessing and sanctity of the Greek Gods. Plato documented that Greek athletes at Olympia were fed diets of figs to increase their running speed and overall strength. The figs contained up to 50% concentration of sugar which was virtually like feeding the athlete a candy bar.
The most famous Biblical reference to figs is that, in which Jesus cursed a fig tree for not producing any fruit for him as he passed by, a curse that killed the fig tree, Matt 21:18
The Jewish King, Hezekiah, was cured of a life-threatening plague by applying figs to the infected spot. 2 Kings 20 The Apostle, James, brother of Jesus, used the metaphor of the fig tree to describe the appropriate behavior that he expected to follow from Christian living. James 3:12
Fig leaves were used in the early church to hide the genitalia of nude, marble sculptures that adorned religious buildings. Fig trees were also used in ancient history as shade trees and to chop and use as quick start firewood.
Cooked figs were used as sweeteners in ancient times and this practice is still used in many third world countries in Asia Minor. The figs contain over 50% sugar. Hybrid figs contain many hollow, tiny seeds on the interior of the fruit, similar in taste as those found in blueberries and strawberries. A fig fruit has a round tiny opening at the base of the fig called an ‘eye.’ A tiny wasp flies into the interior of the fig and pollinates the tiny flowers lining the interior walls of the fig. These tiny seeds are not generally digested by the stomach and offer a great laxative effect to the elderly sedentary citizens. American hybrid figs do not require or receive pollination to be transformed into edible fruit.
Fig trees in Europe can grow to a tremendous height of 100 feet, but the fruit is very difficult to harvest when the tree grows taller than 10 feet. In harvesting the figs, it is important to pick the fruit from the tree, when it is completely mature--usually when it sags, droops, and changes color. If the figs are taken from the tree prematurely, the sweetness declines, but more importantly, if the figs are removed in the juvenile developing state, a white milky fluid exudes from the stem, which is transferred to a person’s hands and then eyes or mouth, the fluid is very irritating and should be washed away as quickly as possible.
One of the most famous figs in the United States is the “Black Mission” fig tree, which was named after the California, Franciscan mission that dates back to 1770, when it was planted there and cultivated on a commercial scale.
Perhaps the most famous product of figs is the fig newton that uses dried figs placed between curved, sweet wafers and distributed by Nabisco. In Europe, figs are gathered from commercial fig tree orchards where they are sized, graded, and packed to sell as fresh fruit at local markets. Figs are easily dried after harvesting from the trees, and various brands are popularly sold throughout the world, because of their extended shelf life in the United States, California is the largest producer of figs and most of them are marketed as dried figs. In the South figs are boiled in sugar liquid, sometimes adding strawberries and the resulting fig preserves are eaten during the fall and winter months as fig preserves on hot buttered biscuits. The trees grow into picturesque specimens in many landscapes. The trunks are often whitewashed when young in order to keep the sun from scalding the tender bark. The roots are vigorous growers and will grow far away from the canopy; however, trimming these roots does not damage the tree.
Fig trees grown in full sun have soft wood that break easily. The trees easily grow to 100 feet in Europe but usually less than 30 feet in the United States. Fertilizing fig trees on most soils is unnecessary and unwise, because nitrogen fertilizer tends to promote aggressive branch growth and will reduce the size of the crop. If too much nitrogen is applied, the fruit does not mature properly and the fruit has an off taste. The first crop of figs that matures in the spring is called the “breba” crop and the next and tastiest crop matures in the fall. Figs are harvested from the trees from June till October, although some new cultivars will be ready for eating in April. The shelf life for freshly picked figs is short and fig generally last only about three days in refrigeration. A fig should not be picked from a tree, if it is over ripe or mushy, since it will begin souring from fermentation. At this point figs will lose their roundness and begin to collapse inward. When a fig is harvested from a tree, it should be soft to the touch and a very firm fig will not ripen properly, if it is picked at this immature stage.
The beautiful leaves of the fig tree are used to make an odd scented perfume with the aroma of wood or musk. The white, milky latex from the tree can be used as a meat tenderizer or in making cheese, if the latex is dried and powdered. Figs can be frozen whole or sliced in plastic bags or jars and expected to last satisfactorily for one year. Dried figs can be soaked in warm water to restore their shape and softness. Fruit of figs is high in iron, calcium, potassium, and fiber, and they are used as a diuretic and a laxative.
Figs contain protein digesting enzymes and can be used as a meat tenderizer and a taste enhancer. Dried figs are often used to substitute for recipes calling for dried apricots, dates, or prunes.
Fig trees are considered to be about as cold hardy as citrus; however, recent hybrid cultivars show that fig trees can survive temperatures below zero degrees Fahrenheit for limited periods of time, and if the tree freezes to the ground, the new shoots will sprout in the spring to rapidly renew the fig tree.’- *This article was first published by Ty Ty Plant Nursery
PERSIAN GARDEN, THE PARADISE ON EARTH
A REFLECTION
…’the idea of a Paradise garden comes from the ancient Persians, who were themselves influenced by earlier civilisations: the Babylonians (in c. 2,100 BC) described their Divine Paradise in the Epic of Gilgamesh: ‘In this immortal garden stands the Tree…beside a sacred fount the Tree is placed’.- Reflections on Monty Don’s Paradise Gardens
‘Persian garden truly resembles the paradise on Earth. The general pattern of Persian gardens (Iranian gardens) has a rectangular form consisting of four quarters abundant in trees and flowers, streams and pathways, ponds and fountains, usually a central pavilion, and the walls that surround the garden. The Persian gardens are so remarkable that nine gardens out of a wide variety are inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage Site. The gardens located in different climatic parts of Iran have their unique features but are still similar in overall structure.
According to Persian literature, the word garden means “paradise “which is derived from the word”paridaiza”. Paridaiza means a garden surrounded by walls. This walled garden makes a harmony between nature and humans’ art of creation. The evergreen trees harness the sharp sunlight, the water flows make the environment cool, and the pavilion blocks the sunlight while providing picturesque view from the terrace.’- Continue to read
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NHS72 – A chance to commemorate and to say thank you
Thank You NHS for who you are and what you do. The nation owes you a debt of gratitude.