While I love this mag for what it talks about with cultural issues and grassroots activism I get pretty flustered by the level of dilettantism and superficiality with which they treat financial and economic issues. I know this particular article wasn't written by anyone at AdBusters, but I think it's fairly representative of the kind of reporting that goes on here in general. Even if this article had been published 3 years ago it would still be dated, and as it stands now what's being reported is hardly different (except in means, i.e. getting around SEC regs with 144A filings, using dark liquidity pools, etc.) from what financiers have been doing for centuries.

I would also note that the article doesn't even begin to try to offer some kind of "solution" to the problem it's sketched out. And to be honest I don't see this superficiality of attention turning around any time soon - i.e., I don't see Adbusters or other similar organizations actually making serious inquiries into economic situations and how they could be improved or combated. I suspect this is for three reasons:

1. The liberal kneejerk reaction to make sweeping rejections of such things as "the world financial system", banking, etc., a moral holdover from Marx;

2. The fact that finance and economics are boring, and hard to glamourize and as such will not be incorporated into a subculture which puts such a priority on "being cool". Reading an Econ textbook is definitely "not cool", and it's obvious most of the writers of these articles are very intent on keeping their street cred intact;

and

3. Most importantly: I think there isn't a serious investigation into the way the financial system functions in the world - and who are the winners and losers of such a system - specifically because many/most of the readers and writers of this magazine (myself included) are direct beneficiaries of these systems, in one way or another. All of us who have been fortunate enough to receive scholarships for college have benefited from the money that has often been reinvested in various funds, including these private equity funds, and every one of us who has gone to college has taken advantage of facilities many of which were funded through such channels as the article described. Any of us who have received grants for art or research projects have received money that has been augmented by investing in these (and the range of other) kinds of funds. The large multi-million dollar projects - for arts centers and websites and films and ipods - for which we middle-class kids are among the primary beneficiaries, all rely heavily on receiving funding from these and other funds to get their projects from ideas to the consumer (us), and as they cut costs, through means including downsizing and outsourcing, we are often the ones that benefit, not the ones that are harmed. Moreover, a lot of us (myself included) grew up and were funded by parents working in the financial sector - in banks, insurance, investment firms, etc. - and while we damn our parents' empty consumerist lifestyle and unfulfilling desk job, we have certainly taken their money.

Perhaps the situation most squarely rests on our subtle sensing that it's not in our interest to know what's going on. We don't want to know about the necessary but sometimes very corrupt system that feeds and supports us. If we did, the more objective of us would quickly notice that we ourselves are just as embroiled (and thus just as indicted, if we're choosing to indict anyone) as the D-bag hedge-fund managers we rail against, in perpetuating and validating the system as it is. We do not ask hard questions. And while we superficially glance with a stern rebuke toward financial system in one direction, we reach out our hand in the other and take the money the system has afforded us.

So, for all us liberal dreamer kids reading this, in the words of Chernyshevsky and Lenin, a question: what is to be done?

"A new capitalism-–brutal and conquering"

i wasn't aware that there ever was a different form of capitalism

I just noticed the 'abridged from Le Monde Diplomatique' and realized that this was taken from a different publication. There's nothing wrong with this - it was credited - but since when is Adbusters putting wire stories on the front page of their website. Belated ones, no less. The story was from almost a year ago. The fact that the article uses the word "new" in the headline, deck and first graph is a bit sad for the state of this publication.

They are vultures and they pay just enough to keep the ones below them from unionizing or do whatever the unions used to do as a collective whole. but we as children of America know nothing of the collective whole because we are taught to go at it alone thinking that were better than the union. While the union is these vulture investors who have just made a rich, really wealthy union with a die hard pact that stops at nothing.

They aren't that new, but given the increasing difficulties developing nations have in paying their debts and the stagnate debt relief situation, it may be more pertinent these days.

The article doesn't really mention it (that this story was told in 500 words seems odd to me) but a lot of the debts that these huge funds acquire come from poor countries who can't afford to pay them off. Banks won't sue because it's not in their best interests (else other countries won't do business with them) but these private funds can buy the debt, sue at will and get fully compensated (including interest and expenses).

It's true that it does happen in North America as well (with private companies rather than countries owing money) where it does affect the lower stratus of the institutions being bought and restructured, but consider when some countries have to cut basic programs such as health care and education in order to pay off these billion dollar 'vulture' funds. That seems to be the real problem to me.

Fuck shareholder economics.

Profit is theft. If all costs are represented there should be no profit. Someone or something somewhere is getting squeezed.