This is a very important study to promote an understanding of our current economic crisis and strategies to protect ourselves and prevent further crises, hopefully by finally undermining and overthrowing the rule of capital and replacing it by rule of the people.
However, to fully understand it, it requires some understanding of the creation of money, the medium of exchange between economic actors. Also, because this is written for an academic journal, it also requires some familiarity with this type of discourse. He uses abbreviations of European institutions that may not be familiar to Americans. As always, simply run your cursor over such abbreviations and Google (etc) them.
Surely, in this current period many can understand how communities, even large cities, must cater to the needs of corporations by offering tax incentives, building related infrastructure, training of future employees, etc, all at local expense. They understand that large corporations have taken over most production of goods and services that local communities depend on, and thus, they must defer to the needs of these giants.
The same phenomenon has occurred with the most critical economic function of all--the issuance of money and credit which has been gradually concentrated into the hand of a relatively few actors concentrated in banking. Now we see entire nations catering to the whims of banking elites. This concentration, which is a natural byproduct of all capitalist enterprises, creates huge crises not only for people, but crises that threatens the banking system which functions at the core of capitalism.
...in today’s global financial system dominated by high-leverage fractional reserve banking and complex financial derivatives, the control over credit has increasingly become the domain of commercial banks.... The shadowy US derivatives market, for instance, estimated to be worth in excess of $700 trillion – well over eight times annual global economic output – is dominated entirely by five of the six largest Wall Street banks, which collectively hold over 90 percent of all derivatives contracts. Together with a handful of others, these banks are now the main creators of credit-money and therefore the principal financiers of government and the main investors in the “real” economy. It is this “royal warrant of appointment” that gives the banks their privileged position in theThe author explores this new phenomenon and looks for effective ways that we, the people, can use to fight back, and win this contest over who rules our societies. Guess what? People in some places in the world already discovered what to do, and did it. However, they didn't realize that they had the solution and failed to carry on; instead they succumbed to short-term relief that banking elites offered them in order to save the latter's precious control of credit and money-issuance. People need to learn these lessons.democratic[political] process, leaving political leaders – both of the left and of the right – ever less willing and ever more incapable of pursuing the policies their constituents expect them to carry out. [my correction]
