The Bought and Paid For Black Misleadership Class and the Neutraization of Black Politics

Glen Ford, creator of Black Agenda Report, who so often writes about the "Obama delusional state", where Black politics has been essentially neutralized, presented “The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy," to friends of Black Agenda Report gathered at New York City’s historic Riverside Church to celebrate the publication’s 7th anniversary on Friday, October 18.

The "Black Mis-Leadership Class", according to Glen Ford, "sees its own personal financial and social interests as being synonymous with the progress of black people as a whole. This class does not seek transformation of society, it seeks only their own elevation within the existing structures. The rest of Black Amereica,, as far as they're concerned, is supposed to applaud their individual success no matter what is actually happening to the masses of black people at the bottom. It is the politics of putting black faces in high places and to hell with those of us stuck at the bottom, or those of us who are below the bottom in the U.S. prison gulag."

Ford used the examples of rising political star, Cory Booker and already established political star President Barack Obama, who, in reality, are both front men for capital, front men for "the man" and front men for the empire, to illustrate the inherent danger of the black establishment to the American black population. What danger? The disastrous consequences that will result if these self-serving politicians succeed--and it appears as if they most certainly are-- at eliminating the mass movement of African Americans who traditionally acted as a "countervailing force to the power of capital," becoming even more influential internally in Black America, leaving "little hope of effective progressive resistance to the rule of Wall Street, its servants in government, and for peace."

“Has the fake-progressive, fake-liberal and in fact deeply conservative FTBP not been granted far too much of a pass on the power-friendly and authoritarian content of his character by those who have been bamboozled into thinking there was something inherently and magically progressive, egalitarian, and democratic about the initially and outwardly startling fact of a black family entering the White House in the land of chattel slavery? As some of us on the Left said from the beginning of Obama’s celebrity, the real story behind the Obama phenomenon has been the ruling class playing the race card in a different way than in King’s time, flipping it, so to speak – a winning strategy for the Democrats at the national level in the post-Civil Rights era, when changing demographics and the more superficial victories of the Civil Rights Movement have made victory possible for nonwhite candidates in national elections. -- Paul Street

Martin Luther King, Jr. is, undoubtedly, rolling in his grave, ironically,  at the election of the first "Black" President, who has managed to crush MLK's dream of:

“...forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of out society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction society of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”

Going "Beyond Obama" requires successfully passing through and politically defeating that ancient black American political current that holds that achieving the maximum number of black faces in high places is thee root to black progress, to black upward mobility, to black nirvana."



Links:

Black is Back Coalition

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One in Three Americans in Poverty While .01% Earn 50% of All Capital Gains

And don't let Fox News tell you that the top 1% pays 50% of the taxes. They don't. The top 1% employ people to find all of the loopholes and deductions so that they do not have to pay taxes. But yes, the top .01% of the nations earn half of all the capital gains. God only knows, the top 1% probably take in the other half +/- a few percentage points.

Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%-- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million-- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

Meanwhile one in three Americans are in poverty, or very close to it.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

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Deep Inside Monopoly Capitalism

The following video is an adaptation of a documentary filmstrip, made sometime in the 1960s, mostly based on the book, Tragedy and Hope, by Dr. Carol Quigley. It traces the history of a small group of powerful people who control the money systems of the world. It shows how this group is protected by governments and how its wealth is derived by creating money out of nothing. We see how this group wields power through government, foundations, education, and the mass media. It has aided such regimes as Russia and China, not because it is pro-Communist, but because a visible enemy and the threat of war have been useful in persuading the masses to embrace the group's ultimate goal: a one world government which they expect to control from behind the scenes.

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Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Will Fuel Economic Cesspool.

If the Bush tax cuts are extended, there is no doubt that more wealth concentration will occur.  At at time when a  growing percentage of our population faces economic hardship, can we really afford to let money, the life blood of our economy,  stagnate like water in a polluted cesspool?  

Because clearly, money at the top stays at the top, creating, if anything, burstable bubbles that can further destabilize our economic future.  It certainly doesn't  trickle down to create jobs, otherwise unemployment would have fallen, considering, currently, the money hoarders at the top - as more money than ever before is accumulating in the pockets of the rich - will continue to hoard.

Even if  "trickle-down" worked before (it did not - think Reagan's wealth redistribution towards the affluent), now that the wealthy have gone global and no longer limit their investments to America,  cutting their taxes is ludicrous.

This year  "the price of admission to the [Forbes] 400 is back up to the $1-billion mark" proving, once more, the rich are not investing in America.  The whole point of capital formation is to inject large amounts of money to increase flow, not to accumulate lots of it in a bank and short circuit economic flow.

Essentially we have transferred economic planning from government to the financial sector. Financial engineering creates an abundance of financial overhead - interest, dividends, fees, commissions, sky-high management salaries, bonuses, stock options, “capital” gains, etc. - that does nothing more than make money from money that doesn't even exist, thus draining, rather than creating value.

The casino games the financial sector plays reduces the value of our money.  If the rich truly believed in America, they would support taxation. 

Links:

The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review

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Can Investor America Get Its Moral Compass Back?

Recycled post from February of 2008 inspired after reading John Bogle:

How many minimum wage employees have been sacked because the till was short a couple of cents? How many tellers fired for adding a couple of cents to balance out? A teller caught adding or subtracting money to her drawer, no matter how small the amount, not only gets fired immediately but also runs the risk of dealing with the law. Yes, one cent is enough to get an $8/hour teller fired for violating the integrity of her position.

Yet, CEOs, earning 600 times what the average teller makes, a crime in and of itself, can get away with manipulating billions of - no, not cents - dollars. Do they get fired? Well, if they do, and that's a big IF, they are rewarded with millions of dollars, bonuses, and cushy deals where they will never have to work again.

Oh, that's right...they are allowed to get away with hijacking our economy because of the "risk" they take. Risk? That no matter how badly they do their job, they are guaranteed a lifetime, dining on goji berries, white truffles, gold leaf, and caviar.

The bottom line is, the chances of top executives or big time fund managers serving time or facing any consequences for violating the ethics of their profession is slim to none; that is, unless the greed and corruption ooze out from every pore as was the case with the Bernie Ebbers, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Dennis Kozlowski etc.

If it's not the CEOs raking in the bucks at our expense, it's the fund managers who are notorious for skimming money from the working man, especially hedge fund managers. Everyone knows that the hedge fund industry, a hotbed of "legalized" corruption, is, at best, a playground of of the hyper-wealthy.

Mutual funds however, according to John C. Bogle, founder and prior CEO of The Vanguard Group, started out as an industry that looked more to stewardship. The main objective of the mutual fund, was to secure the shareholder’s assets. As financial America has transformed itself from an "ownership society to an agency society", mutual funds have become an "industry of salesmanship. It’s become a marketing business instead of a business of management", as Bogle puts it.

Agents or institutions are holding most of the stock in the nation and they are not representing the principles of the industry. The Investment Company Act of 1940 states mutual funds must be operated, organized and managed in the interests of the shareholders rather than in the interest of the investment managers and distributors. Today, corporate trustees and mutual fund managers are acting in their own interests and not in the interest of the underlying pension beneficiaries and the fund share-holders

There is a disconnect between those who own the fund and those who manage or who run the funds. They are working at cross-purposes. Managers make their money by charging the highest fees the market will bear. 1.6% does not sound like much but it makes a dramatic difference when compounded over time. Remember what Albert Einstein said about the strongest force in the universe, "compound interest".

Managers have an interest in getting mutual funds as large as they can to take home the largest management fees they can. The larger the fund, the harder it is to manage and the shareholder pays the price. As Warren Buffet says, “The fat wallet is the enemy of superior returns”.

The average cost of a mutual fund is 3% (1.6% - manager fees + 8/10 % for transaction costs + ½ % sales charge = 3%)

Let's say you get a 10% stock market in the future, subtracting the cost, the average fund will give you 7%. Doesn't sound like a big deal until you look at a compound interest table and look at what happens between 7% and 10% over 30 years. You will find at 10%, a dollar will grow to $18 in the stock market but if it earns only 7%, it will only grow to $9.

In addition, instead of long term value, managers engage in short-term speculation.
The average mutual fund turns over it’s portfolio, at the rate of 110% per year. That means the average fund holds its average portfolio stock for an average of 11 months. The brokers and managers make all the money when turnover is this high, not the investor.

Is that fair? When the investor puts up 100% of the money, takes 100% of the risk but only receives 25% the return?

It's up to the individual investor to capture as much of the market return as he possibly can and no one is going to do that for him. He can begin by finding out how much the fees are and moving his money to mutual funds that are tax and transaction cost efficient and find out which ones understand the wisdom of long term investment.

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is the largest non-governmental regulator for all securities firms doing business in the US. It's very difficult to determine whether funds are fee excessive. FINRA.org provides a mutual fund analyzer that will calculate the fees associated with the shareholder's fund.

Our whole investment system, once focused on corporate value has gotten focused on corporate price. We’re a nation of investment traders, speculators rather than a nation of long-term investors. The only way to be successful is to capitalize on the wisdom of long-term investing and instead we’re all engaged in the measurable folly of short-term speculation. It’s the focus on the precise price of a stock, an illusion rather than the eternal reality which is the intrinsic value of the corporation…how much cash it will generate over the foreseeable future or lifetime. -- John C. Bogle

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USA Slips off the Top 10 Rankings For Entrepreneurial Access to Capital

The Top 25 Countries:

The Capital Access Index ranks countries around the world by the type of financial infrastructures that support entrepreneurial activity by providing access to capital.

The index looks at macroeconomic environments, financial and banking institutions, the development of the equity and bond markets, and alternative capital sources.

Because access to capital creates an atmosphere where making innovative ideas come to fruition more likely, and in addition, the likelihood of technological advancement, job creation, and an increased quality of life, the index is a good tool for measuring how countries can improve their financial infrastructure.

The United States, which dropped from fourth to fifth last year, slipped off the top 10 rankings completely in the 2007 index, to 11th place. This was due to a weaker macroeconomic environment, including higher and more volatile interest rates and higher inflation, compared to the other top 10 countries.

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