`The US is an oligarchy, study concludes' By Nick Sorrentino on April 16, 2014 Norsefire ccIt's sad but true.

This is something pretty much all critics of crony capitalism can agree on whether on what is traditionally called the Right in this country, or the Left in this country. Very powerful, very rich interests influence government policy on a fundamental level. From the military industrial complex, to Big Pharma, to the unions, to George Soros, to Carlos Slim, to the auto manu facturers, to the media, to the insurance industry, to the king crony capitalist s of them all, the banks. Straddled atop these interests is the Federal Reserve, the most crony institutio n ever established. Of course, since the study comes out of Princeton I am sure the prescribed remed y will be more government regulations (which are always manipulated by the power ful for their ends). I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But invariably with these studies it seems the demon is powerful business. A nasty demon no doubt, but its counter is not powerful government. Academics (at least older academics in my expe rience) never seem to get that the 2 are entwined. Thus the reason we have not g otten anywhere on this issue for a century. The average person has long been (perhaps has always been with very few exceptio ns) on the outs. It just feels particularly bad because we are now better inform ed. In some ways we actually are better off than we once were. At least now ther e are outlets such as this one which pay attention to what's going on. This may re present an important turning point for the better. On the topic of how the US has long been an oligarchy I encourage everyone, prog ressives, conservatives, libertarians, to pick up the book Confessions of an Eco nomic Hit Man. I read it years ago and it is an amazing read. It's the real life s tory of an economic hit man and the stuff he pulled all over the developing world in the 1970s. Pretty crazy stuff. (From The Telegraph) Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favour special interests and lo bbying organisations: When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the s trong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it. Think TARP.