Inclusive Capitalism

[seemslikeadream]

financial bigwigs who attended the event control $30 trillion in assets

http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/05/try-to-contain-your-laughter-prince-charles-and-lady-de-rothschild-team-up-to-talk-about-‘inclusive-capitalism’/

Try to Contain Your Laughter: Prince Charles and Lady de Rothschild Team Up to Talk About ‘Inclusive Capitalism’
By Pam Martens: May 28, 2014


Lady de Rothschild Speaks on Bloomberg News About the Inclusive Capitalism Conference
Now that the worldwide Occupy Wall Street protest movement has been beaten, pepper-sprayed, mass-arrested and hog-tied into submission; now that assorted financial luminaries have exhorted corporate media to stop giving air time to people calling bankers evil; it’s now safe for the 1 percent to take over the debate – or so the thinking goes in London.

Prince Charles, who lives in four mansions in England, Scotland and Wales, delivered the opening speech yesterday for a conference on “Inclusive Capitalism” hosted by Lady de Rothschild, wife of multi-billionaire Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild, in the heart of financial skulduggery, the City of London, Wall Street’s alter ego.

Rounding out the day’s speakers were former President Bill Clinton, who repealed the depression era investor protection legislation known as the Glass-Steagall Act which deregulated Wall Street and is widely blamed for the 2008 financial collapse and for ushering in the greatest wealth inequality in America since the Gilded Age; and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers who helped Clinton muscle through the deregulatory legislation. (You can see the full-day agenda here.)

The lurking undertone of the conference was not so much a noblesse oblige gesture to spread the wealth as it was an effort to address the growing anxiety among the well-heeled that if they don’t step up their PR game, government and/or a populist revolution is going to take the reins – and possibly their heads.

Lady de Rothschild (Lynn Forester) summed up the anxiety the day before in an interview with Bloomberg News, saying it’s “really dangerous when business is viewed as one of society’s problems.” She noted further that 61 percent of Britons say they will elect the party “that is toughest on big business.”

The web site of the Inclusive Capitalism Initiative which sponsored the conference adds this note to explain its motivations: “To avoid heavy-handed government interference in the banking sector, a revolution in management, supervision and ethics is required.”


Fiona Woolf, Lord Mayor of the City of London
The participants at the conference came from the same rarefied air as the speakers. It leaked out that the 250 corporate execs and financial bigwigs who attended the event control $30 trillion in assets. Deutsche Welle wrote: “Time will tell whether the ‘Inclusive Capitalism Initiative’ bears any fruits other than more of the sort of conferences at which extremely wealthy people arrive in private jets to spend a pleasant few hours together and reassure each other that they’re doing their best for society.”

Serving as something of a co-host for the day-long conference was Fiona Woolf, the Mayor of the City of London who goes by the 12th Century title, “Lord Mayor.” (Watching a partial web cast of the proceedings was akin to sitting through an animated children’s fairytale set in the 12th Century with repetitions of Prince, Lord and Lady tumbling off everyone’s lips.) Prior to her Lord Mayor-ship, Woolf was a partner at the 3,000 lawyer-strong law firm of CMS Cameron McKenna, which has a heavy presence in finance and banking.

Woolf sounded absolutely dazzled with anticipation when she wrote at the Huffington Post yesterday: “Today, I am hosting one of the most star-studded gatherings of recent times at the City’s Mansion House. Economic and political luminaries from across the globe are attending…” (“Star-studded” and “inclusive” do not immediately spring to mind as synonyms.)

Could it be any more fitting for the first half of the day’s events to be held in a place called “Mansion House” – a Palladian mansion whose first stone was laid in 1739 and which regularly hosts grand dinners for 250 guests on the taxpayers’ dime. The mansion serves as both residence and office for the Lord Mayor of the City of London who functions as a roving goodwill ambassador for financial interests in London. According to the official web site, the Lord Mayor, as a “dedicated ambassador, supporting and promoting the City as the world leader in international finance and business services, the Lord Mayor travels extensively, in liaison with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, fostering goodwill and boosting British trade, particularly the markets and services of the City.”


Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, IMF
Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, also addressed the conference but, apparently, hadn’t gotten the memo about not calling the bankers evil. Lagarde noted that “the most recent poll conducted by the Edelman Trust Barometer, for example, showed that less than a fifth of those surveyed believed that governments or business leaders would tell the truth on an important issue.”

Lagarde also made the following points:

“Since 1980, the richest 1 percent increased their share of income in 24 out of 26 countries for which we have data.

“In the US, the share of income taken home by the top one percent more than doubled since the 1980s, returning to where it was on the eve of the Great Depression. In the UK, France, and Germany, the share of private capital in national income is now back to levels last seen almost a century ago.

“The 85 richest people in the world, who could fit into a single London double-decker, control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population – that is 3.5 billion people.”


Mark Carney, Head of the Bank of England, Speaking on Inclusive Capitalism
The final speaker of the evening was the head of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, who brought up those pesky issues of rigged markets (which in effect are part of an institutionalized wealth transfer system). Carney said: “In recent years, a host of scandals in fixed income, currency and commodity markets have been exposed. Merely prosecuting the guilty to the full extent of the law will not be sufficient to address the issues raised. Authorities and market participants must also act to re-create fair and effective markets.”

Prosecuting the guilty to the full extent of the law? That’s a very novel idea on this side of the pond.

[NeonLX]

Well. That's mighty white of them people.

It's nice to know that someone up there on the hill cares. Y'see, if the moneyed folk would just package their money grab in a kinder, gentler fashion, the hoi-polloi wouldn't go gettin' all uppity 'n' shit. Everyone would be happy.

[Searcher08]

I wonder how many times the word 'derivatives' was used?

Part of their model of the world seems to be that 'business' is now a very wide term indeed and 'speculating with derivatives' is the same in their mind as 'providing a great product / service to customers who love it and taking care of the people who create it'.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I wonder how many times the word 'derivatives' was used?

I had to monitor the event and the coverage and I didn't see that little detail come up once.

As hollow euphemisms go, though, I rather enjoy "Inclusive Capitalism."

Especially because of the implicit acknowledgement that the current version of Capitalism is....well....let's not state things plainly.

That'd be uncivilized.

[Elihu]

.... One of the students held up his hand; and though he could see quite well why you couldn't have lower-cast people wasting the Community's time over books, and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably decondition one of their reflexes, yet … well, he couldn't understand about the flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for Deltas to like flowers?

Patiently the D.H.C. explained. If the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago (a century or thereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like flowers–flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel them to consume transport.

"And didn't they consume transport?" asked the student.

"Quite a lot," the D.H.C. replied. "But nothing else."

Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they should keep on going to the country, even though they hated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found.

"We condition the masses to hate the country," concluded the Director. "But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks." .....

[seemslikeadream]

[seemslikeadream]

From Elections to Mass Movements: How Wealthy Elites Are Hijacking Democracy All Over the World

Posted on May 29, 2014

By Sonali Kolhatkar

Egyptian Minister of Defense Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi walks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during a meeting in Cairo in November. U.S. Department of State

Mass street protests are usually seen as a hallmark of democratic aspirations. And elections are meant to be a culmination of such aspirations, affording people the opportunity to choose their own leaders and system of government. But in country after country these days, the hallmarks of democracy are being dangerously subverted and co-opted by powerful elites. The question is, are we recognizing what is happening under our noses? Three examples unfolding right now are indicators of this trend: Thailand, Ukraine and Egypt.

Thailand has just witnessed its 19th coup in 82 years. Although coup leader Gen. Prayuth Chan-Ocha has promised “genuine democracy,” he has given no timetable for an end to martial law. The U.S. State Department initially refused to call the takeover a coup, insisting that martial law is consistent with Thailand’s constitution. It then changed its tune to issue a strongly worded condemnation.

In Ukraine, voters elected a pro-Western leader after President Viktor Yanukovych fled following mass protests over his refusal to sign an accord with the European Union. Although the incoming president, Petro Poroshenko, has promised democratic development, the U.S. has openly sided with pro-Western forces inside Ukraine and raised the tensions of the conflict to near Cold War era levels, rendering any promises of true democracy ineffectual at best.

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In Egypt, an army general is in the process of being “elected” following a period of violent military rule after post-revolution elections yielded a leader from the Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. quietly condoned the army’s overthrow of the Brotherhood leadership and has made only lukewarm criticisms of violent repression under Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, employing a dangerous wait-and-see approach while Egyptian lives hang in the balance. Once the election is over, Sisi will likely be viewed by the U.S. government as a democratically elected leader.
In Thailand, Ukraine and Egypt, wealthy elites, whether native born or foreign, have used popular movements and elections to ratify decisions in their favor. In an interview on Uprising, filmmaker and investigative journalist Andre Vltchek, who has traveled recently to all three countries in question, explained that in Thailand in particular, Thaksin Shinawatra, the business-tycoon-turned-prime-minister who was driven from power in 2006, “was trying to bring the country to modern capitalism.” He introduced medical care that is much better than the system in the United States, with “heavily subsidized medicines.” Additionally Thailand now has 15 years of basic education free for all citizens, and according to Vltchek, Thaksin gave citizenship to a population of millions in the north who were disenfranchised. Thaksin’s supporters called themselves the Red Shirt Movement, and consisted primarily of rural Thai farmers and left-wing activists.

To be fair, Thaksin’s rule had several serious problems that Vltchek acknowledged as “terrible mistakes,” including a brutal “war on drugs” and a war against a Muslim minority in the south of Thailand. But it was his progressive social programs for which he was “hated by the elites—the monarchy and the military, because in Thailand it is not just money but the gap between the elites and the majority” that matters.

What most of us viewed from the outside as a major people’s revolution occupying government buildings to oust a corrupt leader—the so-called Yellow Shirt movement—consists in fact of forces allied to the Thai royal family and military. The movement has ironically adopted the name People’s Alliance for Democracy. I asked Vltchek whether its supporters were really in favor of democracy. “No, they were not,” he pointedly replied. In fact, “they have nothing to do with democracy”; rather, “they were against democracy,” said Vltchek, who met with many of the Yellow Shirt protest leaders and heard the “rumors that there were ‘very powerful forces’ behind the protests,” which meant “the monarchy and the military.” Vltchek maintained that Thai elites are afraid of true democracy, as the opposition ran in multiple elections after Thaksin was pushed out and lost time and again.