Goldman Sachs Is Part of a Destructive System

Rob Urie of Counterpunch writes about the true costs of the recent financial crisis brought to us by the banks.  The cost to Goldman Sachs, for example, was minuscule compared to the costs for the rest of the world.  The economic system is environmentally unsustainable.  The current financial system that supports predatory banking is unsustainable.  The models that banks use to create profit are broken and therefore unreliable.  The unequal distribution of wealth upwards continues apace.

The True Costs of Bank Crises
By Rob Urie - Counterpunch
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The challenge for reformers and re-regulators is that the system is the problem. Companies pollute because they individually prosper while we collectively pay the costs. Banks take risks that are internally rational while they are systemically catastrophic. Environmental and financial crises cannot be solved with capitalism intact. In fact, when global warming and bank crises are considered, there is little evidence that capitalism ever produced any profits net of externalized costs. And the consolidation of wealth that capitalism produces undermines all attempts at remediation. Capitalism itself is a suicide machine.

What made J.P. Morgan’s loss news is the recognition that the financial crisis hasn’t been resolved. And again, this crisis isn’t from without. It is endemic to the system we are being told we must save. As Mr. Haldane has it, even if the crisis had been resolved, we would still collectively be out more than $60 trillion anyway. And the only way toward those trillions is through increasing environmental catastrophe. By appearances, the current order is in the process of imploding of its own weight. And while dislocations create fear, they also create openings for other possible futures.

Read the entire essay here