If you are new to the way the (economic, political, military, bankster, corporate) world works, and/or you want a refresher course, or perhaps a primer to bring it all together so that you can help to educate others as we head into 2014, then I highly recommend this 25 minute John Stone buzzsaw interview with John Perkins, whose book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, I consider one of two essential books to clearly connect dots as to how current predatory capitalism works to systematically ruin Earth and all those who call Her home. The other book is Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
I notice that Perkins mentions the public banking option, what people’s economist Ellen Brown has been describing and promoting for years. And BTW: even Chris Hedges, whose columns in truthdig are usually beautifully written terminal lamentations, in a burst of optimism this week his latest column talks about public banking! And I quote: “There will never be significant economic reform until megabanks are replaced by a network of state- and city-owned public banks. The revolution must be local.” YES!
Though Perkins doesn’t talk about decentralization, what he does focus on is extremely important, the way corporations are structured to go after profits for shareholders no matter what the social and environmental costs. The problem is global, and it is not personal, not even governmental, it is systemic and corporatist. Thank goodness for the current transit Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn (2012-2015): Uranus suddenly, via huge numbers of unpredictable actions by individuals, breaks open the old plutocratic structural status quo . . .
I also appreciated what feels like a compassionate realization to me: Perkins claims that corporatization has now gone so far that political leaders in any nation are vulnerable, that they have no power, because they can be taken down at any time by either assassination or scandal. The NSA knows all, including how to blackmail anybody.
As Perkins says, don’t expect a new and shining leader to save us. We the People, must and will rise up to restructure the status quo. Traveling internationally as a speaker, everywhere he goes he finds people are waking up. And one of actions we can take is simply to boycott corporations that have not yet transformed themselves to serve the public interest.
In short, as he says, we must switch from a “death economy” to a “life economy,” and we can.
