new•speak
ˈn(y)o͞oˌspēk/
noun
1. Ambiguous euphemistic language used chiefly in political propaganda.
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words; and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
― George Orwell, 1984
Regulation is Newspeak
Things are not at all what they seem.
The word “regulation” has become a euphemism for control and the infestation of concentrated power and wealth. The “need to regulate” is floated as a panacea. In reality it is mere conduit for the influx bureaucracy gone wild.
Consumers - market participants - need to be protected. And yet these protections simply morph into a lobbyist’s dream come true, ending in an industry-constructed bureaucratic death trap that ultimately creates a medieval mote surrounding the masters.
We end up with revolving door madness, in which regulators are sourced from industry to “serve” and then return back to consult. Examples of individuals who have moved between roles in this way in sensitive areas include Dick Cheney (military contracting), Linda Fisher (pesticide and biotech), Philip Perry (homeland security), Pat Toomey, Dan Coats, and former FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker (media lobbying).
High-profile U.S. Representative Democratic Dick Gephardt left his congressional post to become a lobbyist. His lobbying agency, Gephardt Government Affairs Group, earned close to $7 million in revenues in 2010 from clients including Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Visa Inc., Ameren Corporation, and Waste Management Inc.
And it’s widespread, occurring in all of the following agencies:
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement
Environmental Protection Agency
Federal Aviation Administration
Federal Communications Commission
Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Food and Drug Administration
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Securities and Exchange Commission
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
It is needless to mention health care policy and regulation. Of course, the grotesque poster children in all of this hail from giant finance - where the newspeak is loudest.
The years of the so called financial deregulation, culminating with the end of Glass Steagal, came from the many decades of infestation that came before. This is how we end up with too big too fail, too big to prosecute, and just a few massive entities at the helm of modern world finance.
We are on the slippery slope toward totalitarianism, in the name of regulation. But the spirit of the word - the meaning understood by most - is ‘to be’ protected from the abuse of power - usually big corporation.
Observing the early evolution of net neutrality can be nauseating. No matter how it is characterized, in this, the modern age of regulatory capture and regulatory capitalism, it will only end well for industry.
Precious metals investors will get a kick out of this one:
Then there was this…
CFTC Launches National Campaign to Protect Consumers from Financial Fraud
http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7063-14
Washington, DC — The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today launched CFTC SmartCheck, a new national campaign to help investors identify and protect themselves against financial fraud. The comprehensive campaign includes a new website, a national advertising campaign and interactive videos that will help investors spot investment offers that are potentially fraudulent. The new website, SmartCheck.CFTC.gov, unveiled today, is an educational tool that helps investors conduct background checks of financial professionals.
This is the poster child for the problem of regulation at the national level. Ultimately, agencies become protectors of industry to protect industry from the public.
The CFTC is collusive, along with the so-called 'self regulating CME. It's a joke. Not a funny one. But a very expensive joke - with innocent bystanders. From 2010...
Just when you think your ability to get any more disgusted or outraged is finally at its zenith — the point where it is unimaginable to think any worse of Wall Street or its related institutions — along comes a story that outrages you even more.
Futures Magazine published an article last week about the retirement letter that Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Administrative Law Judge George Painter sent announcing his retirement.
In the letter, he announces that his fellow admin judge has never awarded a case to a plaintiff in 20 years, and that he did so at the urging of former CFTC Chair Wendy Gramm.
A reminder to those of you who may be unfamiliar with this particular corporate harlot: Gramm was not only the former CFTC chair, but she was an Enron board member and wife of deregulation architect Phill Gramm, who for reasons unknown to decent society, is gainfully employed as a fluffer at UBS, helping to further besmirch the reputation of that bailed out firm.
“In a notice sent to complainants and their attorneys, Judge Painter claims that Levine told him that he had promised former CFTC Chair Wendy Gramm “that he would never rule in a complainants favor”. Painter’s notice goes on to say, “A review of his rulings will confirm that he has fulfilled his vow.”
So much for fair commodities pricing. Economic policy gone wild grows out like a cancer as finance infests a larger part of the real economy. Corrupt regulators lead to….
The concentration of wealth will go out with a whimper.
Who will hear their cries? Of course, the cycle will continue. The vacuum left behind will the same as before.
This is why Marx saw the final battle with capitalism as being an obvious conclusion of multitudes of people pitted against a ruling elite that could not stand up to the sheer numbers of the multitudes.
