Without judgment, why are billionaires making trillions of dollars during a pandemic?
According to an Oxfam study, since the ascent of the coronavirus, the world’s 10 richest men have seen their wealth increase by a combined half a trillion dollars.
Incidentally, that’s more than enough money to cover the cost of vaccination for everybody on the planet.
Immediately after 2008, the central banks started re-floating the financial markets utilizing state money – newly printed by the central banks. For the last 12 years, there has been no semblance of a free market; rather our state and global banks have been artificially keeping a dying system alive.
This strategy, known as quantitative easing, creates a flow of currency strictly to the top 0.01 percent of the country. If you recall back to President Obama’s stimulus package, every penny of the newly printed currency that taxpayers are still on the hook for went to poorly functioning corporations and unethical banking institutions.
While proponents of these policies convince themselves the companies will invest the money into job or profit creation, we do not see that phenomenon occurring. Rather, the companies look around and see people who cannot buy new or expensive stuff – so they don’t invest. Rather, they take the money that the state prints, they go to the stock exchange, and buy back their own shares.
In the last year, the economy shrank by 3 and a half percent, the worst drop since the end of World War 2. Unemployment is higher than it was during the 2008 crisis – but stock exchanges the world over have not had too much to complain about. We saw the London stock exchange jump two percent the same day the news broke that the economy had shrunk.
If you’re wondering how an exchange can grow while an economy shrinks, you might be thinking too much like a capitalist.
As the Parler incident perfectly illustrates, we don’t live in a society with competition. Very few platforms, such as Amazon or Facebook, own markets rather than simply monopolize them. Smaller companies continue to shrink or stagnate, while Central Banks irresponsibly pump money into the market in a misguided attempt to keep the show running at all.
In late January we saw the Reddit rebellion, where social media users took on Wall Street hedge funds by turning the game on them. They drove up stock prices and not only made cash for themselves but also sabotaged short-selling ( where Wall Street investors bet against struggling companies like Game Stop). The act was summed up across our media as anti-Semetic, and trading apps banned users from performing similar trades.
Remember, we live a Clown World, up to our necks with rubber noses. Each day, our corporations, banks, and states do their best to keep the charade running another day.