As i had written earlier in this group Capitalism as concept / dream was not that bad. Main issue is capitalism it self in true character as defined by Adam Smith does not exist, where equal opportunity to all for growth, Buyer is the king etc…was main tenet.

Today capitalism is degenerated in oligopoly or cartels where even choice of buyer / masses, whether in terms purchasing or education or freedom of thoughts all is controlled discreetly / indirectly, (refer Necessary illusions by Noam Chompsky)

Though you are right that masses have power to bring changes, But inherent will, voice, thoughts are suppressed by dividing them. One of way is so called consumerism and “Me first” culture. This is done by giving same product with slight technical differentiation, and selling them at differential prices and as competing product by promoting / generating demand through very lucrative advertisements. This goes to extreme where cartels forces consumer do generate demand, whether the products have utility for consumer or not.

Cartels choose what you are going eat, were use, spend, in a day and they do it for your whole life. Example in US, health care has artificially made so exorbitant if you don’t have medical insurance you cant survive. If unfortunately you practise / use alternative medicine, like traditional medical system you are either loosing health insurance or your premium would be exorbitant. This is mainly because major drug manufactures have very strong lobby.
Another example, what you eat is influenced directly by majors like CocaCola or Pepsi like companies or indirectly by companies like Monsanto. All of this controlled at back end in future and derivative markets in Wall street or similar stock exchanges.
From where your are going to buy and what is decided by Walmart, JC Penny, Sears, Target Costco and to an extent by eBay and Amazon.
Your fuel is controlled by Shell, Mobile and other 3-4 majors in world.
Your thoughts is controlled by so called free press which is ultimately controlled by Warner Bros, Sony, and other Joshua groups.
So called free Internet is indirectly controlled by Microsoft, Yahoo, Google. Remember 90% of world PC use MS windows.

the whole beauty (sic..) about this system is though each firm in there segment like food, fuel etc would look like they are competing against each other to provide benefit to consumer, but inherently they are together. If you don’t believe, please check shareholding patterns of all these firms. If you are able to figure out through very complex maze of cross holding equity, intercompany ,investment and portfolios. Also check how these companies join hand and lobby in white house or senate or Congress

Now each individual in society is so much dependent on these cartels where they would find strength to come togather and fight. Main effect on society is that this kind of behaviour kills values, ethics and morality. Without which no leader can emarge and socity cant raise it voice.

You may say I have given all examples of US, but masses live in Asia. But remember old saying whole world is born to work like slaves and US citizens (read Cartels) are born to enjoy. another saying says if US sneezes whole world gets cold. which exactly happened in this current recession.

You may wonder does US has so much wealth that it can control. Actually no where near that. I would write about that later based on your feedbacks

I want to make some comment on your conclusion. All along in the history the powerful in the society has never given up their throne by themselves. It’s always been that they have been thrown away by someone else. Sometimes it has been by power struggle, sometimes its been by rational thoughts. The power shift has been happening in the society according to the nature of the power in the history. This time the nature of power is more economic rather than physical strength or intellectual power, so the only solution could be economic radicalization. So it has to be reverse of the current practice which means from few controlling the economy, it has to be major controlling the economy. It’s only possible by tje economic revolution of major coming forward to take the control rather than waiting for the control being passed to them. It has never happened in the society neither its going to happen this time. The issue of delay in revolution is only because common man have lost all their vigour and risk taking capability. It’s the human lethargic characteristics that they don’t look for other options until there is no other way.

So no paradigm shift will happen until common man comes forward to take the control. To me it seems to be only possible when there would be major natural destruction for the correction. So Shiva has to work with HIS face of Vama to teach the lessons of progress to the society. To me it seems that major natural disaster approaching us very soon from all direction which might bring bigger psychological change in the society. I might be wrong but this is my analysis and others can add their view point.

Just to add. seeds of current recession were `swod way back in 2002 by Mr Bush jr which is directly linked to housing crisis. However we can trace it back to early 90s particularly gulf war. refer news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/the_economy/ne…/226986.stm

First major incidence was reported at time of Mr Reagan when he decontrolled central bank intervention in maintaining interest rate.

Gulf war as we all know was primarily designed to create American dominance on oil particularly after dominance in latin america was threatened by Mr Chavej

What in this time American capitalist did, as pointed by Mr Ravi Batra on his interview posted in Youtube was that they did not equally distributed productivity gain which happened to mass IT revolution and globalisation to common people, which led to demand creation on white goods rather than meeting or increasing purchasing power for common people.

To top this Mr Bush Jr announced in 2002 that he would encouraged housing for all american citizens as policy. This led to spurt in real estate market. Too reap abnormal speculative profits Banks encouraged people to take more loans even without checking whether people have purchasing power to meet those loans.

It went to extent that if you don’t have jobs, no income, no collatral you are the best person to get loan. (NINJA LOAN)

To encash and pass on this risk banks bundled these loans and sold it globally rating them as AAA+ highly secure. (seuritization of loans) They managed to do so as property prices were rising so it was assured that banks would get loan value. But oversupply and non payment of loans which was just 0.5% higher than normal interest rate and related forecloser bought the property prices to as low as 30% of original value. Since banks had passed on these loan amounts to insurance and stock markets pension funds and other economic instrument this fall led to domino effect and desastor happened.

From common people perspective, people lost there life time saving to extent of 80%, companies were further forced to cut jobs and down production to meet demands (white good?) people further lost there purchaing power and crisis depend further.

Though we have announce 10.6 trillion USD bail out from US alone, many east european and affrican countries dont have funds to come out of this mess. Refer http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2007/creditcrunch/default.stm

Follow the money

I still dont see any concrete action which would bring world out of this mess other than bailouts, of which most of it spent on either paying rich dividend to investors or compensation to CEOs. Many companies have spent millions from this bail out money on holding gala expensive seminars in 7+ star hotels for top brass.

in end I just want to point out unless disparity of income is bridged between top earner to bottom most people this would not solve. For example Mr Bill Gates earns 10000 USD per sec where are average per person in come per year in india is Rs 3000 only. Till the time greed from wall street and blue boy in banks is not controlled and they are allowed to get as mr Obama once commented “Golden Parachute” dont think much positive
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