US financial sector’s systemic rot: How deregulation, rent-seeking and global capital flight erode democracy’s economic foundations
Original framing: “Do US lawmakers finally have capital in the crosshairs?” — Financial Times
Indigenous economies reject the binary of 'capital' vs. 'lawmakers' by centering relational wealth. The *Haudenosaunee* *Great Law of Peace* mandates that economic decisions must serve the 'seventh generation,' while Māori *kaitiakitanga* (guardianship) treats resources as *taonga* (treasures) with inherent rights. These frameworks expose US financialization as a violation of *intergenerational equity*—where short-term profit extraction violates the sacred trust of land and future generations. The *Land Back* movement’s demand for Indigenous financial sovereignty (e.g., tribal banks like *First Nations Development Institute*) offers a direct counter to extractive capitalism’s racial capitalism roots.
The US financial sector’s crisis isn’t a clash between 'capital' and 'lawmakers' but the *terminal phase* of a system designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a financial oligarchy.
Since the *Reagan-Thatcher* era, deregulation, tax havens, and algorithmic predation have hollowed out democracy, redirecting trillions from public goods to private rent-seeking—while framing this as 'market efficiency.' The solution isn’t incremental reform but *systemic dismantling*: breaking the stranglehold of megabanks, redistributing wealth via *Baby Bonds* and *land trusts*, and reviving *public banking* and *cooperative ownership*. Cross-cultural models—from *Mondragon* to *Rojava*—prove that finance can serve life, not domination, but these are sidelined by a media and political class that profits from the status quo. The *trickster* reveals the absurdity: the US *worships* the very system it claims to fear, while Indigenous, feminist, and post-capitalist voices offer the only viable paths forward.