Ravengate
Partners - Stock market, economic and political commentary by Patricia Chadwick

I woke up in Milwaukee this morning to see Maria Bartiromo on Morning Joe challenging Michael Moore on the subject of capitalism. Go Maria!!

I had to laugh out loud listening to Mr. Moore freaking out about the top 1% of the population owning 99% of the wealth in the country. It’s not that I support a vast skewing in the distribution of wealth in a capitalist society. Rather it was absurdity of the messenger who seemed oblivious to where he fit into the pyramid he decried. As no one else was in my room, I could only talk back to the television, “Well, count yourself in that group, Mr. Moore.”

Then Mr. Moore went on to compare the Dow Jones reaching 10,000 to the tragedy of the current 10% unemployment rate in the country. Maria challenged him, pointing out that the pension and 401K plans of millions of Americans have benefitted from the stock market over the years. He pooh-poohed her intelligent and totally correct response.

Next he lambasted the big banks, begging people to take all their money out of the big banks and to put it into the small, local banks in their communities. What he seemed to fail to understand was that the big banks are the ones that employ all the people at the bottom of the pyramid, so if people follow his absurd advice, the unemployment rate will rise, not fall.

Mr. Moore is a mogul in the entertainment industry. He is a successful capitalist who has benefitted from the deep pockets of capitalism. That is fine and it is a good example of how capitalism works and how it allows people to make big money.

Mr. Moore’s hypocrisy is in neglecting to tell his audiences that he himself is included in the class of people he deplores.

I was flummoxed, bowled over and plain stupefied as I read the article by Eric Dash and Jack Healy on the front page of the business section of the New York Times this past Saturday.   On the surface, the story simply defies belief.

Beleaguered Citigroup has been forced to execute a fire sale of its prize-winning entity, Phibro, because the Federal Government’s ‘pay czar’, Kenneth Feinberg, has ruled that the compensation contract with top level employees at Phibro “promoted excessive risk-taking and ran counter to the public interest”.  (A quote from the article.)

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