The
Rigged Game
Table of Contents
(Including chapter descriptions)
1. Introduction--This chapter is an overview of income and wealth trends throughout the world. It contains personal stories, examples and some statistics to outline my case.
2. The Bakers of Financial Debauchery--This chapter compares and contrasts owner-operated businesses with publicly traded, limited liability corporations. Using examples from newspapers, such as the New York Times, I show that corporate management, members of the boards of directors, and shareholders know almost nothing about how major corporations are managed on a day-to-day basis. This leaves all interested parties with only one way of determining how effective CEO's are managing corporations--rising dividends and share prices.
3. Inflation--the Illegal Corporate Drug of Choice--Using stories from major and lesser newspapers, I demonstrate how and why publicly traded corporations control their long-term prices.
4. Anatomy of a Parasite--This is an outline of how all recessions begin in the financial markets. I point out that all recessions are simply an adjustment to the terms of the distribution of income and wealth under certain and consistent conditions that are rigged into the corporate economic system. I explain why the system may eventually collapse.
5. The Corporate Self-Liquidation (1929-40)--I analyze how the Great Depression unfolded in the financial markets. I also show how the corporate economic system reached a point of what I call "self-liquidation." This occurred because the corporate economic system could no longer stand on its own. I refute conservative theories as to why this economic debacle occurred. Corporate welfare programs were massively increased because of the Great Depression to stop the system from collapsing again.
6. The Age of Financial Equality (1946-72)--I demonstrate how each post-World War II bust cycle through 1970 followed the same path as the Great Depression. However, New Deal policies and corporate welfare programs made a "corporate self-liquidation" impossible, at least not yet. I also examine wealth and income distribution during these years.
7. The End of the Age of Financial Equality (1973-current)--All recessions from 1973 to 2001 are examined, and like the earlier bust cycles, they are shown to be adjustments to the distribution of wealth and income. Income and wealth distribution is examined during this period. President Bush's economic policies are analyzed and are shown to have exacerbated the current jobless post-recession recovery. Evidence is examined that indicate that we may be lurching toward another Great Depression of one kind or another.
8. Race to the Bottom on the Road to Serfdom--This chapter is an examination of how corporations are depriving people of the third world of their lands and labor, and transferring these assets to wealthy shareholders. The role of political power, the financial markets, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other organizations are shown to be very corporate friendly in these third world matters. This makes globalization a very bad policy for most of the world's people.
9. Betrayal of the People: The Rise of Corporate Plutocracy--Money dominates politics at most levels of government, and corporations and the wealthy have far more of it than working people. This discrepancy is why laws are enacted favoring the wealthy at the expense of working people.
10. Origins of the Corporate Economic System--This is an economic history that focuses on the development of corporations until the 1930s'. Among other things, it centers on the political clout of corporations and the wealthy, and their battles against working people over the distribution of income and wealth. Using the works of C. Vann Woodward and others, I show that corporate interests were also behind the segregation movement in the Old South. I provide an historic look at how the vested interests have responded to threats directed at the corporate economic system. This is done to indicate how they might respond to those people seeking change.
11. How to Abolish Corporate Welfare as We Know It--This chapter is a call to action to transform society, and to limit or repeal the rights of publicly traded limited liability companies. To bring this about, among other things, I argue that working people need organizations like those that brought about the civil rights movement to help combat corporate political power.