Everything’s Fixed… Except What’s Broken

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Everything’s fixed except what’s no longer profitable to plunder. Underfunded, ignored, mismanaged by incompetents, it breaks.

Everything’s fixed–except what’s broken. Hmm. Maybe we need to read that again.

Everything’s fixed means it’s been “fixed” like a game or match has been fixed–rigged to benefit insiders while the unwary onlookers and punters have been led to believe that it’s “fair and open.” That con job is the critical cover to cloak the fix/rigging.

If a market or regulatory system can’t be rigged to benefit insiders, then it’s broken because if it isn’t profitable for insiders, it’s neglected until it breaks.

It’s rather ironic, isn’t it? If you want a system to semi-function as advertised, it has be rigged to benefit insiders, as only then do insiders and major players devote enough attention and resources to keep it stumbling along, much as an organism is kept alive so parasites can continue feasting on it.

These zombie-systems rigged to benefit insiders only serve the public in a cursory, minimal-effort fashion. These systems excel at recruiting naive idealists who actually believe in the purported purpose of the organization: public service, education, quality products and services, etc.

These idealists soon lose their naivete as the learn that all that “serve the public” rah-rah is a PR facade to cover the expert pillage by insiders.

You, fine idealist, can be an adjunct for life here at this great university, earning $35,000 a year without tenure, job security, pension or benefits, while we insiders earn $350,000 as associate deans of diversity and other cushy insider gigs that have nothing to do with what students actually take away after they’ve been bled dry via student loans.

The more impressive the facade, the greater the plunder by insiders: the list of sacred cows being plunderd by insiders is long indeed: central banking, regulatory agencies, national defense, higher education, Sickcare–oops, did I say Sickcare? I meant “healthcare”…

The private-sector pillage by insider parasites is hidden behind laughably ludicrous calims of “free markets,” “competitive open markets” and “regulated markets,” all of which have been rigged to enrich insiders at the expense of the public, customers, powerless employees and credulous punters.

Cartels and quasi-monopolies are a favored method to extract wealth while providing shoddy products and services at exploitive prices. Gee, what a great “free market” we have in health insurance: there are two insurers, and their prices are within pennies of each other, except for some three-card-monte tricks with what’s actually covered.

So sorry, but that’s not a competitive open market–it’s a cartel explicitly designed to pillage and plunder the bloated budget of U.S. healthcare.

What passes as “just business as usual” is actually fraud, and was recognized as fraud until recently. Consider stock buybacks, where the top insiders borrow billions and use the cash to buy back shares, reducing the float and boosting the earnings per share without actually increasing revenues, margins or profits. This charade pushes stock prices up, enabling the top insiders to cash in their stock options for immense private gains without creating any new goods, services or jobs.

When you get caught committing fraud and insider trading, just call it “capitalism,” as if “capitalism” is nothing more that a synonym for greed.

Here’s banking in a nutshell, both central banking and private-sector banking: hello, fellow insider. You need a couple billion dollars at near-zero interest to buy a company, load it with debt, sell off its crown jewels and then take it public in an IPO? No problem, here’s the billions. Hello, Jose Q. Citizen, you want a loan? Well, if your credit rating is near-perfect and you can prove you don’t actually need the money, that will cost you 7.5% interest. If your income is limited and your credit is less than stellar, somewhere around 18% is the best we can do.

If you’re struggling to make sense of the tumultuous stock market swings, just do what the smart money does: invest in the Pelosi Portfolio which tracks Ms. Pelosi’s remarkably profitable personal trading, or get the inside scoop on what stocks regulators are personally trading in the industries they regulate.

If a system can’t be rigged to benefit insiders, it’s abandoned to its fate. Sadly, a great many essential services fall into this category of benign neglect. Public education, public health, public transport, conservation, public safety, the quality of goods and services–if the funding dries up and insiders’ opportunities to increase their personal gains dry up, then the rats scurry off the sinking ship.

Everything’s fixed except what’s no longer profitable to plunder. Underfunded, ignored, mismanaged by incompetents, it breaks. If it offers a rich bounty for insiders to exploit, there’s a mad rush to keep the funding-body alive. If not–well, we tried to save the patient but we’re not miracle-workers. Indeed.

That’s where we are, America. Everything’s fixed–except what’s broken.

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