Death Rate

Worldwide, a recent year's gun related homicides totaled 127,607.

Worldwide following the Great Recession (meltdown), the deaths caused by Wall Street, et. al., totaled 900,000+  just in eastern Africa and just the first year.

Worldwide civilian owned guns, 644,008,400.
Wall Street business employees, 165,200 if you count them all.

Do the math.

Wall Street employees are 926.37 times more deadly than guns and gun owners.

If you count just the decision makers, they're 10,000+ times more likely to kill someone than a gun owner, criminal or otherwise.

The recession events brought the deadly nature of national and international finance practices to our attention.  The world-wide impact continues unabated and more broadly than just the single recession event.

"We have learned that the largest financial institutions are a dagger pointed at the heart of our economy." A recent New York Times editorial noted that, regarding the controversies surrounding JPMorgan Chase, “the underlying problem is not only this or that violation, but the fact that the sheer size and scope and complexity of the banking behemoths defy controls, encouraging speculation and bad behavior.”

We would add undermining free-market capitalism and nearly bankrupting the United States. ...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis of the 2007-09 financial crisis and its aftermath estimates the cost in the range of $15 trillion-$30 trillion, or $50,000 to $100,000 per American citizen. One to five years of output produced by 310 million U.S. citizens is down the drain. 

At the center of these horrific losses are the “Too Big to Fail” (TBTF) behemoths. The Dodd-Frank act claims to end TBTF. Instead, it entrenches the TBTF pathology. Since its enactment, the giants have gotten bigger and the profitability of community and regional banks that might have posed more meaningful competition has been undermined by its complexity.

There is a tenable alternative: Government policy should require that giant banking institutions restructure and streamline their disparate operations into separately owned companies, less complex and opaque, and more manageable and focused.

Lesser actions are incapable of altering the unacceptable status quo or providing for a credible regime shift. For example, higher capital requirements (or decreases in permitted “leverage ratios”) may provide temporary confidence in the capital strength of TBTF institutions, but they offer false security. In a financial panic with liquidity runs, enhanced capital cushions cannot ultimately stem a crisis of confidence and outflows of funds.
...

The only workable solution is to downsize and devolve the TBTF banking entities into units that the FDIC would label “Too Small to Save,” just like the other 99.8 percent of U.S. banks."

From WSJ and Dallas Federal Reserve Bank articles by RICHARD W. FISHER and HARVEY ROSENBLUM

E-War

Food aid is the only thing keeping tens of thousands of people alive in
South Sudan. Since the civil war broke out in December, 2013, around
10,000 people have died and almost two million have been displaced
by the violence. Frustrated, the U.S. may expand sanctions against
Sudanese officials who are dragging out the peace process.

South Sudan had existed as a country for just two years before it
 succumbed to civil war. The fight is between President Salva
Kiir and his biggest political rival and former deputy Riek
Machar, but civilians have taken most of the damage.
According to the UN, both sides have engaged in
extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances,
rape, other forms of sexual violence, and
attacks on hospitals.

From helpful history sites, here's a chronological listing of people trying to subjugate others. Each conflict was occasioned by a powerful few manipulating the many with a consequential flow of wealth to those who hold the the upper hand.  It's economic warfare ... E-War.

Warfare needs a redefinition perhaps, it we're going to understand the causes and the goals of war initiators.

Despite claims of ideological motivation, the structural elements of such large-scale conflict appears to be built exclusively on the bottom line, on wealth to be gained by conquest.  In many, there is an ethically justifiable position for defenders in the conflict even though all sides emphatically claim the moral high ground. For the people involved, they generally believe what they are told by their leaders, that their cause is noble, just, and necessary.

Empires rise or fall, territory is gained or lost, maps are redrawn.

Much like Wall Street and the financial industry today, such conflicts have historically been based on power, wealth, and the taking of resources at the expense of others. 

Three Centuries of War (and Economics)
       Each a conquest for wealth and power

1700

1700-1721: Great Northern War
1701-1714: War of the Spanish Succession
1715: First Jacobite Revolt (the '15)
1733-1738: War of the Polish Succession
1739-c.1743: War of Jenkin's Ear (America)
1740-1748: War of the Austrian Succession
1744-1748: King George's War (America)
1744-1748: First Carnatic War, First
1745: Second Jacobite Revolt (the 45)
1749-54: Second Carnatic War
1754-1763: Seven Years War 
1754-1763: French and Indian War
1563-1570: Nordic Seven Years War, 
1775-1782: American War of Independence
1778-1779: War of the Bavarian Succession
1793-1797: War of the First Coalition
1798-1802: French invasion of Egypt
1799-1815: Napoleonic Wars

1800

1807-1814: Peninsular War
1809: Franco-Austrian War / War of the Fifth Coalition 
1813-1814: Creek War (U.S.A.)
1823-1826: First Anglo-Burmese War
1846-1848: Mexican War
1853-1856: Crimean War
1859-1861: Second War of Italian Independence
1861-1865: American Civil War
1879: Zulu War (South Africa)
1894-1895: First Sino-Japanese War

1900

1900: Boxer Rebellion
1911-1912: Italo-Turkish War
1914-1918: First World War
1915-1917: Senussi Uprising
1919: Third Afghan War
1939-1945: Second World War
1947-1960: Malayan Emergency
1954-1975: Vietnam War 1954-1968 and 1968-1975
1966-1990: Namibian War
1980-1988: Iran-Iraq War
1982: Falklands War
1984-1988: Tanker War
1991: Gulf War

2000

2003: Sudanese Genocide
2013: South Sudan Civil War
2015: Wall Street War Against the World  (continuous since the 19th century)  Although publicly traded securities appeared around 1790, the predatory practices like we see today emerged later, around 1845.  Following the establishment of the telegraph, the brokerage industry took the place of fair practice in the marketplace.  Deregulation of the finance sector beginning in the 70's unleashed market practices and mega-corporations.  Banks are now bigger than countries, and the wealth of the world flows to the richest, only.  Economic warfare gives us the accelerating GAP between the rich and everyone else.  In the world.



If you're curious, trace the historical flow of wealth and the continually widening gap between the rich and poor.  The best visible indicator, it persists across countries, centuries, and empires.  It is the very heart of warfare and oppression.  And it's the centerpiece of today's business culture.

Figured out which side you're on yet?

Recommended resource for a human 

perspective: http://livingonone.org/

  

Recent History, Bill Moyers

For a little perspective on how we've changed as a culture, this narrative reaches back to the early 20th century in the South when memories of the Civil War still touched the thinking of folks. Marshall, Texas, is home to Wiley College, a centerpiece in the Civil Rights Movement.

Transcript:

Hobart Key: I’ve often thought, you know, that I was lookin’ backwards through rose-colored glasses. But for good luck, when I was little, I kept a sort of a diary for part of it… and I …and I look back at that diary and the writing’s not too good, but it says just what I’m saying now …..

Bill Moyers:… in those days …