The 1% are addicts

All our leaders are addicted to power, we accept that and hope that they maybe will do some good. At the same time history tells us that as civilisations wind down these megalomaniacs cling to power, and cause catastrophe as they are pried away from their addiction. I have dealt with personal addiction, at the time I was addicted I was not open to reason, my addiction was in control. As with megalomaniacs. But there is an additional dimension of addiction that I have just realised by watching Jon Corzine in the clip near the end of this blogentry. I have often described the LSE ( and Wall Street) as coke sniffers who run our economy and get high on the buzz of the millions they are making or losing. And we trust these people with our savings – savings that feed their habit. Look at what these coke sniffers did with the sub-prime loans. They gave mortgages to people who couldn ‘t pay, and then sured these untenable loans up into hedge funds and traded them on the stock markets – such is fraud maybe legally fraud, maybe not legally, but this is fraud – intention to deceive to make a profit. Here are John Bird and John Fortune describing what they did:- But the main point of this blog comes from watching Jon Corzine:- Jon Corzine This man is a gambling addict. I am no psychiatrist but everything about him speaks to me of his being out of control. His gambling addiction led him to invest money that was against even the minimal regulations that the 1% apply. He was gambling and to continue gambling he took money from wherever he could get it – borrowing from his mother, the neighbour, pawning jewellery, the car. Now he is up there bulling it out, and because they will protect their own he is not likely to be punished. Hopefully he will be one of their sacrificial lambs, like Ernest Saunders, to pretend that there is some justice, but I doubt it. This man was CEO of Goldman Sachs, and many Goldman Sachs advisers work in the Obama administration – evidence that Obama is a bought Wall Street puppet (see movies “Lifting the Veil” and “Inside Job“). Perhaps we need to make the counsellors of Gamblers’ Anonymous government advisors? When addiction is in charge we are heading for disaster, it is that simple.