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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by loquitur
Host, read the stuff you're quoting. It says something slightly but importantly different from what you're saying.
And none of this has anything to do with fascism.
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loquitur, you posted this:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by loquitur
.....Host, you object to pension funds being protected by the government? That's who the biggest shareholders are, and that's who is getting bailed out. Pipsqueaks like me are barely a hair on the pimple on the ass of the market. Even rich people don't account for that much. It's mainly institutions, the biggest of which are the pension funds. ......
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I have a high degree of confidence that I countered your assertion effectively with this "stuff":
Quote:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstra...8FD85F4C8385F9
and at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...759590,00.html
The Text of President Roosevelt's Message to Congress on Monopoly; Cites Estate Tax Returns Good Citizens as a Problem Suggests Individual Penalty Asks More Control of Banks
April 30, 1938, Saturday
Page 2, 4850 words
The text of President Roosevelt's monopoly message to Congress today was as follows: Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.
.....Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself.<h3> That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power.....</h3>
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<h3>Concentration of wealth and corporate control then:</h3>
Quote:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...764913,00.html
Thirteen Families
Monday, Oct. 28, 1940
....He wrote an erudite bombshell of questionable accuracy titled America's 60 Families, watched his subjects squirm while Secretary Ickes and then Assistant Attorney General Jackson quoted it with gusto. Within less than a year the families were sprawled under more powerful microscopes as the Temporary National Economic Committee made a study of corporate practices and controls.
Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission published its report to null a 121-page study of "The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Non-Financial* Corporations." Based on 1937 figures, it whittled the Lundberg roster to 13 families, was considerably less personal than his census of Du Pont bathrooms, considerably more dogged in tracking down actual shareholdings (Lundberg had estimated fortunes by 1924 tax returns).
It found:
<h3>» Of an estimated 8,500,000 U. S. stockholders, less than 75,000 (.06% of the population) own fully one-half of all corporate stock held by individuals. The majority of the voting power in the average large corporation is in the hands of not much over 1% of the shareholders.</h3>
But some of the biggest and best-known corporations are exceptions (i.e., widely held, without visible centralized control): A. T. & T., Anaconda, Bethlehem Steel, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Goodyear, R. C. A., U. S. Steel, Pennsylvania Railroad, etc.....
....» The 13 most potent family groups' holdings were worth $2,700,000,000, comprised over 8% of the stock of the 200 corporations: Fords, $624,975,000; Du Fonts, $573,690,000; Rockefellers, $396,583,000; Mellons, $390,943,000; McCormicks (International Harvester), $111,102,000; Hartfords (A. & P.), $105,702,000; Harknesses (Standard Oil), $104,891,000; Dukes (tobacco, power), $89,459,000; Pews (Sun Oil), $75,628,000; Pitcairns (Pittsburgh Plate Glass), $65,576,000; Clarks (Singer), $57,215,000; Reynolds (tobacco), $54,766,000; Kresses (S. H. Kress), $50,044,000.
» Three groups—Du Fonts, Mellons, Rockefellers—have shareholdings valued at nearly $1,400,000,000, control, directly or indirectly, 15 of the 200 corporations....
*Excluded: banks, trust companies, insurance companies, investment houses.
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<h3>Concentration of wealth and corporate control more recently:</h3>
Quote:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...34/ai_56973864
The survey of consumer finances
Business Economics, Oct, 1999 by Robert P. Parker, C. Brian Grove
....4. Ownership of many types of wealth is very concentrated, e.g.,
estimates from the 1995 SCF indicate that the wealthiest 1 percent of all households in the U.S. own 55 percent of directly held publicly traded stock.
A standard random sample of the population will not give adequate insight into holdings of such concentrated assets....
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<h3>Concentration of wealth and corporate control in our own era:</h3>
Quote:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/Pubs/F.../200613pap.pdf
Family Finances: Evidence from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances
Page 28:
Ownership shares. For some assets, the distributions of the amounts held are far moredisproportionate than the differences in ownership rates. Most striking is the 62.3 percent shareof business assets owned by the wealthiest 1 percent of the wealth distribution in 2004(table 11a); the next-wealthiest 4 percent owned another 22.4 percent of the total. Other key items subject to capital gains also show strong disproportions:
the wealthiest 5 percent of families owned 61.9 percent of residential real estate other than principal residences, 71.7percent of nonresidential real estate, <h3>and 65.9 percent of directly and indirectly held stocks. For bonds, 93.7 percent of the total was held by this group.....</h3>
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....Even your denial that my response "had anything to do with fascism". If my response was so weak, you would have taken the quote from FDR apart....
you didn't even respond to it.
You said securities ownership is diversified, I've shown persuasively that it was not.....70 years ago, nor is it now.....
So please give me a more detailed response. Was FDR wrong about what fascism is? Am I wrong maintaining that the top one percent wealthiest are still the "controlling private power" that FDR was describing? If they own two thirds of the stock and 93 percent of the bonds, as of 2004, isn't the Fed protecting their interests as it rapidly lowers interest rates and fails to promote a strong dollar? |