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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 2/28/10

Why Bankers Love War

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War is profitable for Bankers. It's the best investment they can make.

Henry George recognized this 130 years ago (indeed, it was WWI that sapped the strength of the Georgist movement). Other writers, such as Mason Gaffney, and Stephen Zarlenga, and many,
many others, recognize it today.

Think about it from the point of view of a business that exists solely to sell debt (banks). What could be better than to loan money that:
1. Is strictly to the best debtor in the land: the U.S. Government
2. Will continue to be borrowed until the war is "won" (or, better yet, in modern times, to fund an endless series of wars on terror, in different lands, needing different - and expensive - weapon systems)
3. Will be spent on things that go BOOM, and then have to be replaced, over and over and over.
4. Has virtually no limit on upward costs, due to technological advancements. Almost every major country is developing drones of its own, (see here, here, here, here) meaning we could soon be embroiled in drone wars, without all those "messy" dead and shattered young people cluttering up the airwaves and discouraging further war-making. Of course there'll continue to be dead civilians, but that's just collateral damage, you know. Then, there's the Terminator scenario, whereby the newly self-aware machines turn on their creators as they come to realize their creators are the truly violent ones...they will be right.

So, banks love war, unless it's their buildings and personnel that get hit, but maybe, just maybe, even that doesn't matter, since the Supreme Court tells us, in Citizens United, that Corporations are people too. So, why not have a war without any human involvement at all? Just faceless corporations, launching drone wars by proxy governments safely sheltered in underground bunkers, laying waste to the Earth, where the Expendables (my term for the 99% of humanity that takes no part in making wars) are just sitting there, waiting to be obliterated? Sounds like a plan.
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Scott Baker is a Managing Editor & The Economics Editor at Opednews, and a former blogger for Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Global Economic Intersection.

His anthology of updated Opednews articles "America is Not Broke" was published by Tayen Lane Publishing (March, 2015) and may be found here:
http://www.americaisnotbroke.net/

Scott is a former and current President of Common Ground-NY (http://commongroundnyc.org/), a Geoist/Georgist activist group. He has written dozens of (more...)
 

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