America's move to benevolent elected dictatorship

Back in college, we were first introduced to a powerful author by the name of Ayn Rand -- a Russian emigrant to the United States of America from Stalinist Russia -- and ever since a fierce opponent of Communism and all forms of governmental control. She was not an economist per se, but as a philosopher she advocated capitalism as the only logical economic possibility for a society that can claim itself to be based on respecting the right to freedom and human rights.

An ardent supporter of the founding principles of the US of A and a staunch atheist, her objectivist theory was nevertheless ruthless in stating that human beings are as rigidly subject to the laws of the universe as any other species or objects in the universe, that humans cannot 'do whatever they want and get away with it'. While religious advocates stated that breaking God's rules would invite divine wrath, she maintained that human beings were subject to rational laws, and breaking them would invite a chaotic self existence -- an inability to deal with life and with living. During her time, she was a staunch critic of the progressive governments of USA and never more than when Nixon floated the dollar and did away with the Gold standard. She passionately denounced the theory that money is the root of evil, saying that it was the most honest measure of a person's economic integrity and therefore must be valued.

Almost forty years down the line, her predictions seem to have come true to the T. In 2008, Americans seem to have gone to the polls not to elect a President of the US of A, but to choose a messiah who they hope will get them out of the mess they don't seem to have a clue how they got into. Having tried to politically correct themselves in every issue, right to how a toddler should be handled by his own grandparents, they have achieved a rare level of dumbing down from which simple maths has begun to look like rocket science.


If America were the capitalist country the world claims it to be, then businesses in USA should have long ago insisted on Washington delinking fiscal measures and currency control from political clutches. America's defence system and its ability to wage wars across the world should have been dependent on the actual value of its GDP -- and its currency creation and circulation should have been in the hands of an independent fiduciary system, free from the political influences of Capitol Hill. In fact America should have been arguing for just such an economic model across all nations, rather than going to war to install an externally enforced political system on countries unprepared for the same.

Today, what we are watching in the USA is an unbelievable story that is the political equivalent of an elected benevolent dictatorship. American democracy has degenerated to an 8 year gamble on the next lucky mascot. The issue of Democrat and Republican has vaporised into irrelevance. Today's news is everything about what Barack Obama says, what he does, what he means, and what he can deliver. This, from a nation that was founded on the rejection of political interference in its citizens' lives, and claimed that that government is best which governs the least. Such extollment of a political leader in any other country would have been tantamount to political immaturity.

One can argue that the dynamics of the world have changed -- that this is not the
18th century;that those principles have become obsolete; that the growth of technology at an exponential rate and the inability of legislation to catch up at the same pace is somewhat responsible. But this is an escapist argument.

Virtually everything about globalisation has had a political background. The development of the Eurodollar market was political. Tax rates, interest rates and currency floats by governments forced money markets either into or out of certain countries. Customs unions and politically backed bilateral trade agreements have forced trade to adopt newer methods of circumventing international laws. The greater the legislation, the more complicated the modus operandi to overcome legislative barriers. Initially, it was trade that was targeted; gradually the legislation moved to currency as money itself became a source of trading. The traditional method was to use money to purchase a good. Politically motivated legislation (e.g. the floating of currencies) led to money being used to purchase and sell money -- better known now as currency trading.

Apart from the explosive breeding of incomprehensible financial instruments, the most conspicuous consequence of such legislation has been the development of a specialisation culture that has produced an advanced version of 'It's not my job' culture that is seen in red tape organisations. Loosely translated, this advanced sophisticated culture can be stated as 'If its your job to tell me I am wrong, then I shall proceed to do wrong and leave it to you to find out and tell me I am wrong. And between us if we can strike an understanding, then we will leave it to your next hierarchical authority to find out. If we can still save our skins, then being practical demands that we do exactly that'.

It is funny that in the maritime world, a captain hands himself over as a hostage to a notorious gang of pirates in Somalia, in exchange for his crew being freed, while a CEO earning million dollar bonuses writes a pathetic resignation letter justifying the payment of bonuses from taxpayers' money for an organisation bankrupted under his stewardship. It is even more incongruous when one observes that the former went it alone, without any idea of what would happen to him - while the latter enjoyed extensive political patronage of a sympathetic government. American capitalism was born with the objective of celebrating the spirit of free enterprise -- because it believed in the Richard Philips of this world. Yet the socialisation of American business has eventually resulted in the exposing of its most prominent businessmen and financial heads to be of the likes of DeSantis (him being just a prominent scapegoat for the bunch).

Whether America and Americans can slowly trod back to their avowed economic ideals is a moot point. The President has vowed that the foundations on which America was built are not diluted. But

• when regulators, the Federal Reserve, the auditing profession and the professionals themselves failed to prevent the crisis,
• when the tracking of the bailout money itself is recognised as an impossible task,
• when a governmental bailout inevitably requires governmental oversight,
• when business heads and organisations are not only resigned to governmental intervention, but are actively seeking it
• when business leaders are not raising a hue and cry about political interference in business,
• when you don't hear the words 'laissez faire' anymore,
• and when an atmosphere has been created where virtually every American sees some virtue in the interventional economics and politics of the Obama government

what in fact does the future hold for the US of A? And if American economy has nosedived and crashed into blatant socialism, what is in store for the rest of the world?

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