So rich he wants to start his own country !!!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: joebageant.com

Joe Bageant | September 29, 2007 | Category: Letters from readers

So rich he wants to start his own country

Joe,

This evening I watched Bill Moyers show on PBS. The first guest was John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Mutual Fund Group. Vanguard is one of the few (the only?) employee-owned fund groups, one of the few places you can be assured of not getting screwed as a small investor.

I've never heard any US business leader give a bleaker assessment of the US and US business practices. He calls the US the new Rome -- bread and circuses, companies being run for the benefit of the top half a dozen executives at the expense of the stockholders, private investment companies buying hospitals and nursing homes, which drop care so far that residents die, and having complete immunity from lawsuits, since their corporate structure is so complicated that nobody can find out who owns the facility.

I knew all this stuff already, but I've never heard any high business figure talk about it. They're all whistling past the graveyard, hoping that the peons don't rise up and revolt like they did in the French Revolution. Bogle said as much, that revolution of some sort couldn't be ruled out, especially as millions of people find that they can't pay their bills, after being fleeced by financial capitalism.

Interesting fact: sub-prime securitized mortgages were only invented so hedge funds would have high-yield debt to buy.

Bogle also said what is normally beyond criticism that finance capitalism (what we've got, it isn't even real capitalism) doesn't add anything to society, it only subtracts value. The people on top just shove papers back and forth and collect all the value the rest of society generates.

I think Barbara Bush would make a pretty good Marie Antoinette (she raised that scum President Zero), but the whole ruling class is so out of touch, they could be living on another planet.

To comment on your giving money to your needy friends -- a man can trust money, or he can trust the bounty of the universe to provide. You chose to trust the universe to provide, and to show solidarity with your friends. We're only here to help and take care of each other. The universe will be good to you, since you've come to trust it.

Take care,

Brent

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Brent,

Last week I was working with Swiss Public Television doing a documentary on "Joe Bageant's Winchester." During the process I ran into a man from one of the wealthy local families who works in global finance abroad, has some murky US State Department connection with his work, and owns a brokerage in New York. We yakked bit, he agreed that there is a worldwide financial collapse coming, then he asked what I was doing back in town. I explained we were filming my people, the people born on the wrong side of the tracks. The working grunts. "Well when they find out what has been done to them and that it can never be fixed I don't want to be in this country." I thought such a bold faced admission of our condition was pretty bad.

But it got worse. He has an escape plan. The guy is so rich he wants to START HIS OWN f-king COUNTRY.

"I want to pull together enough people I know with enough money to start a new country. We could essentially buy any of a number of small countries around the world. Money is not the problem." (And indeed there are countries more than happy to be under new ownership. Anybody been to Albania lately? It is literally so fucked up absolutely nothing works because employees do little things like take the doors and windows home with them from work.)

Know what the problem is? Agreeing on a country. Plus the heavy time commitment involved in buying a nation. But hell, the guy has kids so it's worth it.

Can't do enough for the kids, ya know.

Vasco Dones, the Swiss documentary's producer (see, I have a witness and don't really make this stuff up!) was standing beside me on the old courthouse lawn while this conversation went down. We looked at each other afterward and both seemed to be thinking the same thing: "We're making the wrong f-king documentary."

But I'm not sure it would do any good to do so even if it were made mandatory viewing at gunpoint. I've told several intelligent people about this incident. No one seems even mildly surprised except Vasco and I. ("Well, he's rich, right? Rich people do those things. Look at Oprah.") People do not pay attention to anything more than one inch in front of their noses. They get out of bed every morning and as long as the car starts in the morning and the TV remote can be found in the evening, everything is OK. You and I watch a nation of conditioned mammals, yet, how could it be otherwise? People everywhere are the same, just conditioned by better, more just, circumstances in some cases. It is our national extremes that make us stand out these days.

Still, ferocious private greed and public blindness are nothing new. Only the ruse changes. There is no political party on our side, no candidate, just the age old circus of power. And on those rare occasions that change actually happens for the people, it always comes down to critical mass. From where I sit, (which is usually right behind a column in the stadium of life) that is a long, long way off, regardless of the noise and fireworks of the empire's buildup for the next non-election.

I mean Mitt Romney? Hillary? Obama? Giuliani?

The American mammals are still asleep in their little pens for sure -- except during those hours they run on their gerbil wheels. And watch Oprah. And accept inequity simply because the rich do that sort of things. (sigh)

One tires of being continually outraged. Like you said, the universe provides plenty of everything, including outrage.

In art and labor,

Joe