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| Warren Buffet's partner Charles Munger recently told students people need to "suck it in and cope" with regard to difficult economic times. |
Bloomberg News and other media outlets recently reported that Charles Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, better known as the company headed by Warren Buffett, told students that people suffering with economic distress as a result of deteriorating conditions in America should “suck it in and cope," and that “You should thank God” for bank bailouts because they "were required to save your civilization." Munger made these bold claims in a discussion at the University of Michigan on Sept. 14.
He justified his position by commenting on his allegedly "capitalist" philosophy by claiming, “Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies." The culture he is talking about is the culture of competition and free markets, the culture of capitalism, a culture that since the end of the 15th century has meant wealth and prosperity for Western nations at the expense of the people it conquers across the rest of the world. This is the civilization that almost ended during the economic crisis two years ago. It is this "culture" that is also the number one enemy of humanity today and Munger's subconscious ignorance or deliberate support for this reality alongside his subsequent justification for today's imperialism is representative of the root problem plaguing the world today. His argument is akin to the general argument espoused by a very real ‘global elite.’ In actuality, we should not be trying to save the "civilization" Munger cites whatsoever, but should instead be working to replace it altogether.
Charles Munger's thinking is a quite common representation of the true sickness of the exceptionalist, American mindset. He, like many other wealthy Americans, lives at a material level incomparable for most and he, like most Americans, attributes this quality of life to some superior culture or civilization deemed 'the American way'. Like other imperialist powers before them however, the American mindset fails to connect this worldly success to the rape and plunder of others all over the world. Here Munger reveals a severe lack of compassion for the poor, suffering due not to their lack of effort s much as to the speculation of banks and an elite. Munger justifies government intervention for the sake of civilization, as if bailouts for the rich are philanthropic, but the poor and impoverished must be left to the survival of the fittest, free market, Social Darwinist doctrine of so-called capitalism. The true tragedy is that the culture that prevails in America props him up as a genius despite the fact that this philosophy of life and business is fascist and little different than the core beliefs of Adolf Hilter, Mussolini, Augusto Pinochet, and unfortunately any other individual with an MBA or working on Wall Street.
It would be wrong to imagine that the American people are upset by this. It would also be wrong to imagine that most of them are even conscious that he said it; the statements were only covered in the business press. However, it is important to mention that this is a narrative that will only increase as bailouts prove to do nothing for the poor and oppressed and start to return the financial speculators to the limelight as an American public wonders what direction their world will turn.
Don’t expect much as a reaction however; it should be apparent to all by now that American people actually like insults like this from their rich, the eroding middle class in America enjoys being reminded time and time again that the reason they are superior to other countries, cultures, and civilizations is because of their individual liberties and freedoms the rest of the world does not have. Meanwhile, for at least a generation, their own economic liberties have been stripped away. They are, of course, too ignorant to realize that it is the "free market" ideology they espouse so much that is directly responsible for keeping other citizens of other countries from sharing similar freedoms but that is beside the point.
Where there should be outrage, there is passive acceptance as the rich prepare yet again to blame the poor for their own plight. This message from the "capitalists" to the peasants, like the message from the FBI to "anti-war" activists the same week, as they raided and invaded their houses allegedly due to provision of terrorist support, is a telling tale that the chickens have indeed come home to roost and that the American consumer, so touted as the lifeblood of globalization is about to experience the same sort of austerity member of other nations have also gone through. Whether it was in the World Bank, IMF privatization programs in South East Asia, Africa, Latin America or wherever else, after the bubbles of consumption and credit explode, deficits run to amounts deemed deep enough for concern, and calls for austerity abound, the western world is facing the same cuts that have propelled so many other hopeful citizens effected by financialized neo-imperialism to their knees in years gone by. The only difference is that there was some resistance to the austerity of these eras, and that remnants of that resistance are still evident in those societies today.
Americans, however, with their sadomasochist tendencies seemingly will take it lying down, accepting their fate and blaming themselves. The only real movement against the norm, the infamous tea-partiers, are merely representing resistance that ignorantly does the bidding of the elite and as the only organized counter political force in America today completely represent the actual illness associated with this imperialist mindset: the reality that it tends to pervade throughout the entire culture. Perhaps it is justice that those that sat silent through baby boomers and generation X-ers as peasants all over the world assembled their consumer goods and suffered under authoritarian regimes will now have to suffer. However, the unfortunate and depressing reality is that without getting Americans themselves to understand this argument, there will be little chance of changing the domination of this doctrine anywhere in the world.
Americans need taught the reality that there is nothing "capitalist" in Mr. Munger's argument and that the message to other "civilizations" should be clear: the "free market" applies when it is good for the anglophile world of business corporatacracy. In the event the free market fails and the most powerful institutions within it fall as a consequence, well then the theories that Western civilization spouts and proselytizes globally, first via politic and then through force if need be are discarded, even if that means wiping out the domestic population's politicians who claimed to be pro
tecting the general public when they acted so quickly to bail out the banks and corporations in the first place. This form of contemporary capitalism suggests that it is the citizens that must suck it up and deal with it, and only after the elite have been protected. This completely opposes all fundamental axioms associated with the purpose of governance with nation states and democratic doctrine altogether. Therefore, Americans must be taught that they do not actually live in a democracy in its truest sense and that this is why their claims to foreign policy on behalf of democratization have been a hoax.
tecting the general public when they acted so quickly to bail out the banks and corporations in the first place. This form of contemporary capitalism suggests that it is the citizens that must suck it up and deal with it, and only after the elite have been protected. This completely opposes all fundamental axioms associated with the purpose of governance with nation states and democratic doctrine altogether. Therefore, Americans must be taught that they do not actually live in a democracy in its truest sense and that this is why their claims to foreign policy on behalf of democratization have been a hoax.
While many Americans do understand this reality, they will still fight tooth and nail to defend the notion that they have actually done a lot of good for the world. This can be easily countered, just ask them to explain to you when, where and how. If you are enlightened in any way about the public record of foreign policy that accompanies this merger between the elite and government, their ignorance and false assumptions will be easy to point out, and so the necessity that we war with the elite and change the system altogether should naturally come to the foreground of discussion.
It is fitting that such public insults, that should reveal to Americans just how far they can go to rely on their rich, should come from those associated with the All-American institution of Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffet is known for his cowboy hat wearing and Cadillac driving all-American attitude. He goes to great lengths to maintain the perception that he is just your run of the mill capitalist, an All-American living the dream. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is with near certainty that Mr. Buffett is very much unlike most Americans in real life. Firstly, while 1 in 6 Americans lives in poverty, he is a billionaire. Thus his external portrayal is a contradiction, but it serves the purpose of making him seem like an honest, hard-working businessman. In reality he is a shark, and the comments of his Vice President were certainly preplanned as part of phase two in utilizing the most recent global economic crisis in order to build a world where governments serve the rich and tell the dying poor to stop whining about it.
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Here is Buffet with Arnold Swarzenegger and Jacob Rothschild. Swarzeneggar, a fascist, took over California with the help of Buffet, the All-American |
Buffett is famously known for his quote classifying derivatives as financial weapons of mass destruction. In reality, Berkshire Hathaway is a primary dealer and holder of the financial instruments however. Certainly if he were indeed worried about destruction he would not contribute to the problem. Recently Barney Frank, longtime governmental puppet of the elite within the House Financial Services Committee, bragged that Warren Buffett stated with regard to the recent financial reform legislation that it was so tough on derivatives he would have to get out of the business altogether. Yet, to this date he has done nothing to decrease his holdings. This is akin to George Soros arguing that gold was in a bubble when it was priced at $1,000 an ounce during the time he was arranging to transfer large portions of his wealth into the asset.
Buffett is also famous for his contributing his entire wealth to the Gates Foundation for philanthropic work. He is busy trying to get Chinese billionaires to follow suit as we speak. In reality here, this is a convenient way of not having to pay taxes on inheritance and allowing it to go forth and build the sort of world where you call saying one thing and doing another capitalism, and telling people ravaged by bank fraud and manipulation, faced with the prospects of paying billions back in taxes to bail out the perpetrators to “suck it up and deal with it.” It is philanthropy from a fascist to enforce fascism and is the classic “poker face” manipulation via philanthropy that has marked the imperialist capitalist's method throughout American history. It is this form of public relations throughout most of American history tat has helped to keep the majority populace passive enough to perpetuate the fraud while using philanthropy as a means to obliterate any semblance of free markets altogether, and to rather assist in building and maintaining an oligarchy that has always been a part of American history only recognized when reading the traditional accounts alongside the history of Wall Street, its trusts, corporations, and philanthropic associations.
And so American people must be encouraged to realize these realities and to understand the arguments made by their elite for what they really are. Mitch Shylock, blogger at globaleconomicanalysis sums it up like this:
The one thing we desperately need is a culture change. Instead, we made too big to fail, too bigger to fail. We preserved a culture that benefits billionaires like Munger and greedy CEO's that helped cause this mess. That culture benefits no one else.
Yet Munger wants us to “suck it in and cope” and expect to be happy that he did not get wiped out. You know what? It would have been a damn good thing if the culture died and assholes like Munger got wiped out. Munger just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt Wall Street's culture was not worth saving.
In the end, it is also important that we realize not to take out anger and frustrations on the individuals as much as on their ideas. Sense of privilege and entitlement are sentiments that are prevalent and will remain prevalent in all societies. You treat the sociopaths by isolating them, regulating their behavior, and minimizing the risk that they will blow up the world to the best of your ability. Munger also alluded to a post World War I Germany which was unable to stabilize its financial system in the 1920s, about it, Munger said, “We ended up with Adolf Hitler.” In reality, international financiers then as well used a crisis to create Hitler. Hitler was after all funded completely by the City of London and Wall Street.
The “civilization” that the bailouts helped save has only gotten stronger. Today, less too big to fail banks (TBTF) control an even greater percentage of U.S. deposits. This means even more wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few banking institutions and because financial reform in America failed to separate commercial banking from investment banking, these institutions will continue doing business all over the world and in the process will continue protecting and propping up dictators and despotic regimes from China to Africa. Because reform did nothing to address the root cause of complication, this "culture" of usury driven, speculation and extraction can now be perpetuated on a global scale while poor Americans are told to suck it up and deal with the problem. The World Bank is reporting that growth will come from the developing nations in years ahead, who by 2015 will overtake the developed world, but these developing economies are also dependent completely on these same financialized, Western elite. So, "capitalists" like Munger will continue getting rich while poor and oppressed people in every country suffer as a result.
While Americans may actually deserve to be wiped out, the whole world needs to tell the banks and not the people to suck it up and deal with it. Had they done that, unemployment rates would still be 10 percent, the stock market would have tanked and the dollar may very well be in a worse position, but then rather than trying to recreate a speculation driven financialized casino that is the world economy, humanity would be pressed to create something new, a form of globalization that works for all layers of civilization. That is even more unlikely to happen now that banks are salvaged and sitting on free money waiting to invest in the developing economies overseas as taxpayers suffer with unemployment and depressed wages inside a system that consummate academics and journalists properly identify as neo-feudalism.
Unless humanity wakes up and organizes an alternative international order to the one that failed but was bailed out by an American population receiving enhanced enslavement as a result, similar catastrophes will happen in coming years. Americans may applaud the Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway out of ignorance or simply because many of them bought hook, line, and sinker the propaganda of the elite. "You’ve gotta love a man who speaks his mind, even when he’s wrong", reports a Bloomberg commentary about the issue, but that does not mean the world's populace has to fall for the rhetorical manipulation of money madmen supporting banksters unconditionally simply because they are rich.
People like this are a disgrace to "civilization" and should be unauthorized to even use the term. Banking has long since ceased to provide any benefit for a physical economy that develops a middle class and supports an increasing quality of life. Instead, it extracts rent from productive economic activity and exploits real humans in the process calling profitable marginal gains of decreased costs due to exploitation of real human beings. It is inevitable that as long as the axioms that drive contemporary finance continue to exist unchallenged, the system will continue as well. So, as more and more people identify this problem, the real goal is to create not only a coherent argument against idiots like Charles Munger but a comprehensive alternative solution that can replace it.
Let people like Mungerand Buffett suck up and deal with the reality that humanity won't take it anymore and that there is a better formula for economic success that creates stability for the whole. Americans could start by putting Goldman Sachs and the other banks into government receivership and then changing their macroeconomic order so that the only inheritance that Warren Buffett will leave is a long list of commentary about how not to build a society based on justice and liberty for all. These "capitalists" are not the enemy as much as it is the ideas they hold as self-evident truths. The problem is that many of those oppressed by the tyranny of the contemporary order hold the ideas as well and therefore are indifferent. In this manner, they are oligarchs without wealth and power. In the event humanity attacks the ideology, we will still have oligarchs, but none of them will have wealth or power and will subsequently become as insignificant as their ideas should be.
