The economy is not controlled by financial manipulating; it's controlled by production and marketing processes. Those who promote financialization dogma look to the stock market as the measure of the economy. Fifty years ago, the stock market reflected (didn't cause) economic activity. Now days there is no relationship between the stock market and the economy.

One reason for the disconnect is because there is such an ocean of excess wealth that it goes into the stock market with no relationship to reality. Another reason is because algorithms, now days, try to out-guess each other, which creates spurious results riding on the perpetual increase caused by excessive inputs.

So the only factors relevant to the economy are production and marketing processes. When there was more rationality involved, production and marketing (the whole economy) were directed toward meeting social needs with a degree of efficiency and relevance. Those days are gone. The incompetent power mongers who took over everything were not capable of evaluating such complexities. Instead, their focus was how to keep dollars flowing upward.

So product quality and relevance deteriorate, while dollars flow upward. There are numerous mechanisms for extracting dollars from the lower classes (now days, 90% of society) and channeling them into the stockpiles of the caretakers of the social resources.

One of the mechanisms for moving dollars upward is "mergers and acquisitions." Whenever companies are bought and sold, someone walks away with that much cash, while consumers pay for the company again. The process of churning ownership is perpetual, because companies constantly get more efficient and reduced in long-term expenses and debt, which requires another excuse for keeping prices of products high. Ownership churning serves that purpose.

Another mechanism for moving dollars upward is tax give-aways. Conservatives throw trillions of tax dollars at corporations and billionaires for the supposed purpose of improving the economy while bitching about the needy ripping off the taxpayers.

Now days, trash technology which clutters the landscape and destroys resources as "renewable energy" sends dollars upward through cost-plus contracts at the expense of taxpayers and ratepayers who have nothing to say about the process.

The institutional method of sending dollars upward is to hire endless, like-minded executives lavished with pork and bonuses to be paid for by the clientele such as students borrowing for tuition. Banking the loans at 13% interest compounded annually multiplies the process by factors of ten or twenty for a life-time.

Most basically, the economy continually drifts toward cheaper labor to pay for waste, fraud and abuse by incompetents who write their own paychecks.

All of these forces have one thing in common: They extract resources from the lower classes to pay for the incompetence of power mongers who use rip-off as a compensation for the destructivity of their corruptness.

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