Monday, April 30, 2018

Yes, We Are Witnessing a Plutocratic Coup

Yes, We Are Witnessing a Plutocratic Coup:

"One coup that most of us haven't heard of is The Wall Street Putsch of 1933. The financial establishment — along with its media and political henchmen — rushed out to bury the story and protect the gentlemen of Wall Street implicated in the part. It's a heck of a story about capitalist skullduggery by a few Lords of Wealth trying to overthrow the government and enthrone a fascist regime friendly to them. In 1933, the Great Depression was in full force, spreading mass unemployment, waves of bankruptcies and abject poverty. The people's boiling political anger was scaring the aloof denizens of Wall Street, as more and more people joined in open rebellion against all things the plutocrats considered sacrosanct: unfettered capitalism. The year before, Franklin D. Roosevelt had scored a landslide presidential victory over Wall Street's man, then-President Herbert Hoover, by promising a New Deal for millions of Americans impoverished by the Depression. To the bankers' horror, the new president's government policies and programs to help people get back on their feet included new taxes on wealth. Such Wall Street multimillionaires as Grayson M-P. Murphy (banker and Anaconda Copper Mining Co. head) and Robert Sterling Clark (heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune) were enraged by FDR's moves. "Class war," they wailed, claiming that their "liberty" to grab as much wealth as possible was being shackled. Calling Roosevelt a traitor to his class, these men implemented a plan to oust him by enlisting a private military force made up of thousands of destitute World War I vets who were protesting the failure to receive promised federal bonus payments."