If a retail stock broker attempted to bury his client under margin debt or allowed the client to commit financial suicide in the market, the broker would be on the wrong side of the law. A long line of arbitration cases and Security and Exchange Commission rulings mandate that a registered representative must guide the client on a course of suitable investing. But apparently, burying counties, cities, countries, and U.S. territories under debt has no legal barriers on Wall Street. One has to get caught bribing someone to get charged by a regulator.Whenever I see a liberal, pretending to be radical (for example, see this) comment about how evil "unregulated capitalism" is, I cringe. Of course, they are implying that all was fine under regulated capitalism, that all the exploitation, massacres of workers, imperialist adventures, the subversion of governments, the internecine capitalist wars, and their boom and bust economies have been just fine. If not stated outright, what is often implied is that we only need to try harder to elect people (in ruling class managed elections) who will regulate capitalism and everything will be okay once again.
Capitalist ruling classes never compromise their advantageous position vis-a-vis workers unless they must to maintain their advantages and their system of advantages. This so because capitalism is not a social system as advertized, but a class system of domination over societies. By 1981 when the US ruling class installed super-salesman Reagen into the White House, they had accrued so much power and wealth that they knew they could eliminate most of the existing regulations hampering their quest for profits and power. And, they went on a rampage eliminating all those that were passed by a very threatened ruling class back in the 1930s.
This was followed by minor economic busts, the slashing of social safety nets, the export of jobs to third world countries, and then a major economic collapse in 2007/2008. In contrast to the 1930s when they felt threatened by an irate working class, this time nothing has changed. The Martens have been reporting the details of this for several years now, and this article is another fine example. The American people have been bewildered and bamboozled by corporate propaganda, defeated by capitalist class policies eliminating their civil rights, surveilled 24/7, and intimidated by militarized police forces.
