ABSTRACT
SPECULATORS BECOME hugely wealthyfrom commodity trading, while the bottom layer of the economy sinks into financial stagnation. In May 2015, four large global banks plead guilty to entering into a collusion scheme that manipulated the value of the world’s currencies. For the banks, being convicted of a felony “is likely to carry more symbolic shame than practical problems,” as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency that oversees illegal actions such as
these, had already granted waivers “that allow the banks to conduct business as usual” (Corkery and Protess, 2015, p. B2). In tall glass buildings men and women in gray suits discuss plans to invest in a small company in Cambodia whose fleet of boats uses adolescent slave labor to harvest fish. At the Pentagon, military strategists push the button on drone strikes in “target-rich” neighborhoods, killing innocent victims as “collateral damage”; in Yemen, without trial or due process, a CIA Predator drone
hits and kills Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who advocated killing Americans in the name of jihad-a decision, some say, that was “simultaneously morally required and morally forbidden” (Coll, 2015; Shane, 2015).
