Joe Mellor — “Capitalism needs criminal syndicates and criminal markets,” says Mafia expert

I had a friend, now deceased, who was experienced in intelligence. His view was that democracy is actually safeguarded by a balance between "the armed criminals inside government and the armed criminals outside government." 

In totalitarian societies there is no organized crime and the only power center is government. But a government also has to be strong enough so that the armed criminals outside of government don't take over government. The ideal is a standoff that prevents any armed group from dominating.

This post is interesting in that light.

One of the world’s leading experts in the Mafia, Roberto Saviano, has claimed that Capitalism relies on vast global criminal networks to thrive. They are actually part of the same system, the legal and the illegal worlds are increasingly merging.

The London Economic

“Capitalism needs criminal syndicates and criminal markets,” says Mafia expert

Joe Mellor

Steve Taggart — Mafia has joined fight against IS

First it was hackers Anonymous now the Mafia has joined the fight against ISIS. A member of the notorious Gambino New York crime family has warned it not to try anything in the big apple, as it is under Mafia protection.

The Mafia has apparently enjoyed a revival in America in the last few years as funding has been diverted away from fighting organised crime into the global threat of terrorism.
In a TV interview Giovanni Gambino, son of infamous gangster John Gambino, said that the Mafia is better placed to protect New York from the terrorist threat than the FBI, who are stretched.

Giovanni said that Homeland Security and the FBI act too late as they lack the “human intelligence,” to be able to track the movements and actions of suspected attackers, regardless how much technology they have at their disposal.…

Please tell me this is a joke.

The London Economic
Mafia has joined fight against IS

Steve Taggart

Even the "owners" are getting ripped off

The plunder of wealth by the oligarchs and elites has reached levels where even the "owners" of enterprises are being ripped off.

Remember George W. Bush and the "ownership" society? That was a euphemism for, "We're going to cut your wages and salaries, make jobs hard to get and fast-track the flow of wealth up to the top. So if you want a piece of the pie, you'd better become an owner, like, own stocks or assets or something. Own a business."

So that's what most people did because they had no choice. Jobs became scarce so they either had to take a risk and start a business (most fail) or, they were forced to scrimp and save and add, monthly, to their 401k's and other retirement vehicles that mostly invested in stocks. They became "owners."

This directive continues on today under Obama, so don't think that he is not part of this scheme. He is.

I'll leave aside for a moment that the banksters and other Wall Street "geniuses" nearly killed everybody's savings with their wild casino games (and many people still haven't recovered), which in the end we had to pay for with higher taxes and more cuts in spending (taxes), leaving us profoundly ripped off.

But some of us still had our stocks, either held directly or through those retirement plans and we were happy and placated, because stocks came back and dividends grew--not by much--but they grew and we felt as if that ownership society thing was finally paying off like they told us it would.

Oh really?

Well, take a look at these two graphs. One is corporate profits as a percentage of GDP and the other is dividends as a percent of personal income.

Corporate profits as a percent of GDP

 Dividends as a percent of Personal Income

As you can see, profits are at an all-time high as a percent of GDP, whereas dividends are not even though profits and stock prices are.

So what's happening here?

The only explanation is that the executives running these enterprises (who are, in 99% of the cases NOT the real owners) are taking more and more for themselves and giving us--the real owners--less. In fact, it almost looks like, if dividends rise too fast, as they did coming out of the Great Recession, they will deliberately slow the pace of  wealth sharing because they need to take even more for themselves.

And you wonder why stock analysts are now saying valuations are high? BECAUSE PROFITS ARE FLOWING INTO THESE MOTHERFUCKERS' POCKETS. THAT'S WHY!

This is once again a blatant screw job by elites and oligarchs who are really nothing more than a bunch of corrupt, scumbag mafia and they have taken control of our lawmakers our government and our lives. 

We really need to take back control of what is rightfully ours. This shit's gotta end.

Rowan BosworthDavies — How the legacy of Thatcher and Reagan made the 2008 financial crisis inevitable

The consequences of Thatcher and Reagan's Friedman and Hayek-inspired free market utopianism and market fundamentalism. Adds more detail to Bill Black's exposé.

Max Keiser
How the legacy of Thatcher and Reagan made the 2008 financial crisis inevitable
Rowan BosworthDavies

Mafia now "Italy's No.1 bank"

Reuters
Mafia now "Italy's No.1 bank" as crisis bites-report
By James Mackenzie

ROME, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Organised crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country's biggest "bank" and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday.Extortionate lending by criminal groups had become a "national emergency", said the report by anti-crime group SOS Impresa.