From Bill Gross. co-founder of PIMCO. They manage over a trillion in bonds. Emphasis added. He’s certainly not your normal billionaire. His monthly letters at PIMCO are often like this, almost populist in content. Like George Soros, he is quite capable of making huge sums of money while understanding the massive inequalities and escalating problems within the system.
This country desperately requires a rebalancing of priorities. After readjusting the compensation scales via regulation and/or free market common sense, America needs to anoint a new set of Mensans who can create something more than a cash machine and make this country competitive again in the global marketplace. We need to find a new economic Keynes or at least elect a chastened Congress that can take our structurally unemployed and give them a chance to be productive workers again. We must have a President whose idea of “centrist” policy is not to hand out presents to the right and the left and then altruistically proclaim the benefits of bipartisanship. We need a President who does more than propose “Win The Future” at annual State of the Union addresses without policy follow-up. America requires more than a makeover or a facelift. It needs a heart transplant absent the contagious antibodies of money and finance filtering through the system. It needs a Congress that cannot be bought and sold by lobbyists on K Street, whose pockets in turn are stuffed with corporate and special interest group payola. Are record corporate profits a fair price for America’s soul? A devil’s bargain more than likely.
The problem is, they aren’t just selling their own souls, they’re mangling the country as they do it. Bill Gross is right. We need America 2.0. First task: throw the moneychangers out of the temples.
There is something of a contradiction in there, it’s like someone running around in a formula 1 car and complaining about people burning too much gas. Isn’t the bond markets part of the problem, they can sit and point the finger at politicians while the politicians point the finger at the financial sector. Meanwhile both go merrily about their business of ripping-off the general public. They all belong to the millionaire’s club and they don’t want too much to be done to change the system. Your preaching about that mythical beast — compassionate capitalism.