Part C in The Insider's Economic Dictionary Camouflage: A cloak of artificial attractiveness or even of invisibility. Financial debt-claims on the economy’s income and assets camouflage themselves as wealth, although the financial tactic is to strip it. (See Euphemism and Parasite.) Capital: From Latin caput, “head,” as the political seat of government, society’s guiding intelligence or brain. Economically, the term is used ambiguously to represent two antithetical forms of capital. Physical capital in the form of tools, machinery and buildings are means of production evaluated by the cost of producing or acquiring them. Finance capital represents the rentier claims on these means of production and their revenue. Its dynamics tend ultimately to strip the means of production via the claims of compound interest in excess of the ability to pay out of ...

Part B to the Insider's Economic Dictionary Bailout: Reimbursement to speculators and savers of losses incurred by bad loans, investments or deposits in banks that fail. The effect of this moral hazard is to preserve financial control in the hands of the economy’s wealthiest 10 percent, “making them whole” by shifting the loss onto the bottom 90 percent of the population in order to benefit those at the top of the pyramid (see Rentier and Oligarchy). Balance of payments: Every country has offsetting trade and financial movements. And as in any balance sheet, every country’s payments are in overall balance by definition. The balance of payments is an accounting statement of international credits or inflows such as export receipts, the run-up of debt, and payments to foreigners for imports or to buy ...