I cannot copy the memo, only read it on the web. Its willingness to write so honestly about our neoliberal capitalism, it is interesting and worthy of comment. Maybe someone can figure out how to copy it.
I just watched Capitalism: A Love Story, and it really only confirmed for me a lot of what I already knew about the extent to which our political system has been infiltrated by the private interests of non-political, economic actors, most notable those in the banking and international finance industries. I wanted to say a bit about the citibank plutonomy memo, though, because llike a lot of people probably were I was struck by it in the movie and later looked it up online and read it. I think Michael Moore seriously misrepresents this document in his film, as in reality it is little more than the observations of a case study drafted into rudimentary financial strategy. It's basically a few citibankers writing investors to say "the fact is, there is a massive wealth disparity in the US, dubbed the plutonomy. We feel that, without passing any moral judgement on the fact, this phenomenon causes A, B, and C, and we want to use the predictive power of this hypothesis to make money.". Michael Moore presents this document as some kind of secret blueprint for the corporate takeover of the world, and that's not at all what it is...
No, Moore was right in exposing this despicable group of Citibank people who set out to strategize to make the rich become even richer "without passing any moral judgement".
The document is of 2006. And, for heaven's sake, the People of America bailed out Citibank when it got into deep shit in 2008.
What these Citibank people are doing is utterly immoral, and they should be stopped from endorsing and promoting neo-feudalism in the world.
6 comments:
How new, or secret, is it?
It was intended to be secret. Once it is in a Michael Moore movie ....
It's not that new. I heard about it back when I was consulting at a Citi department a while back, and it wasn't available on their servers then.
Iirc, the memo is from 2006. Digby has talked about it a lot.
There's a download button right at the top of the page to which you linked, btw. You can get it from there.
I just watched Capitalism: A Love Story, and it really only confirmed for me a lot of what I already knew about the extent to which our political system has been infiltrated by the private interests of non-political, economic actors, most notable those in the banking and international finance industries. I wanted to say a bit about the citibank plutonomy memo, though, because llike a lot of people probably were I was struck by it in the movie and later looked it up online and read it. I think Michael Moore seriously misrepresents this document in his film, as in reality it is little more than the observations of a case study drafted into rudimentary financial strategy. It's basically a few citibankers writing investors to say "the fact is, there is a massive wealth disparity in the US, dubbed the plutonomy. We feel that, without passing any moral judgement on the fact, this phenomenon causes A, B, and C, and we want to use the predictive power of this hypothesis to make money.". Michael Moore presents this document as some kind of secret blueprint for the corporate takeover of the world, and that's not at all what it is...
No, Moore was right in exposing this despicable group of Citibank people who set out to strategize to make the rich become even richer "without passing any moral judgement".
The document is of 2006. And, for heaven's sake, the People of America bailed out Citibank when it got into deep shit in 2008.
What these Citibank people are doing is utterly immoral, and they should be stopped from endorsing and promoting neo-feudalism in the world.
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