QuoteBy the end of the 50s, the combination of good times and constant corporate messaging succeeded in emasculating proletariat militancy, solidarity, and class consciousness. From there it was only a short  time before America's corporate class achieved its next big victory.

Although its long-term effects were unremarked upon at the time, the Supreme Court under Nixon-appointee Warren Burger – the first pro-business Supreme Court since the Depression – used specious arguments to, in effect, overturn usury laws then on the books in a majority of the states. Until the late 70s, for example, Minnesota had a law that capped interest rates on any kind of lending at 9.5 per cent. The Burger Court decision voided that and similar laws.

The end of usury laws ushered in the era of easy credit – and growing national and personal indebtedness – which has now brought the economy to its knees. This, you will recall, was when everyone and his just-paroled brother began receiving multiple "pre-approved" credit card applications in the mail every day of the week. Before long we had the S&L crisis, the dot.com collapse, and the housing bubble – all made possible by the availability of easy credit unleashed by the ability of lenders to charge any rate of interest they thought they could manage to extract.

The other long-term effect of this Supreme Court decision was to trigger a flight of investment capital from industry into the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) segment of the economy. After all, why lend money to a manufacturing company with the prospects of realizing, at most, a 10 percent return on your investment, when you could use that same money to invest in banks, credit card companies, speculative real estate, or for-profit health insurance organizations and realize 15, 20, maybe even 30 per cent rates of return?