Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Kuros]

Its a good theme, and happily, someone besides Hitchens has taken it up.

The Quiet Coup

A former chief of the IMF explains how the finance lobby controls Washington, and because of that, the US resembles a Banana Republic.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Uh oh. There's a certain regular poster who's going to blow a gasket over your title.

[bacasper]

Oh, no, not the "powerful elites" who run things!

Congratulations, Kuros, you've become a conspiracy theorist!

[mises]

Here is an interview of the author of the Atlantic article by Moyers:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02132009/watch.html

[Gopher]

Kuros: does the United States merely resemble a foreign-capital-dominated, monocrop-producing, export-oriented, Central-American, oligarchic republic, or is it actually one? Get your allegation straight. Your author shows no indication that he understands "banana republic" any further than grasping that it serves as a useful pejorative and makes for sensationalist, propagandistic charges, while adopting pseudosophisticated airs...

In any case, ignorant, unoriginal, hyperbolic nonsense. As old as Smedley Butler. No more no less.

Next item?

[RJjr]

What angers me more than anything else about these financial oligarchs, even moreso than how they steal my tax dollars, is how they're tarnishing the reputations of both capitalism and democracy.

Even though the economic problems are the direct result of big government and NOT the free market, it has become common lately to read about "the failure of capitalism" which is total bullshit since it's been a failure of big government and runaway spending and bullshit laws.

It's only a matter of time, when things get really bad in the USA and Europe, particularly Britain, that the phrase "failure of democracy" will frequently be in the newspapers. Just like how there hasn't been true capitalism and the problems these days have nothing to do with capitalism, there hasn't been true democracy either. Our leaders are all bought off by lobbyists who, in effect, are the true rulers in America with the politicians being mere figureheads and pawns. We the people have been priced out of the market and have been rendered irrelevant since we're no longer a true democracy. These days, our government more closely resembles fascism than democracy. Yet, during the Great Depression II, people will be talking about "the failure of democracy" just as people already talk about "the failure of capitalism." Dictators around the world will be using our problems as propaganda to prop up their own styles of government.

[Gopher]

Here (esp. first two mins. backgrounders) is your real "Banana Republic," ya morans.

Are you people truly so bankrupt of vocabulary and metaphors that you honestly cannot describe, critique, or simply discuss American affairs these days without resorting to easy clichés, tried-and-true propagandistic devices? "Fascist regime," "socialism," "banana republic." Bah.

[Hater Depot]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[caniff]

[Fox]

[Gopher]

If lobbyists maintain such a grip on the American govt why is T. Geitner sitting alone at the Department of Treasury -- without any deputies, undersecretaries, or assistant secretaries, or others at that political-appointee level to serve him?

[rollo]

Mises should address this. the Hedge funds were allowed in spite of laws banning naked short selling that have been on the books for fifty years to pillage American equities by massive naked short selling by Bush administration bureacrats.

Gopher is right about the term banana republic!!

[Kuros]

[Captain Corea]