A Term Like Capitalism Is Incredibly Slippery,

Either Greed Belongs In A War Zone, Or It Doesn't. You Can't Unleash It In The Name Of Sparking An Economic Boom And Then Be Shocked When Halliburton Overcharges For Everything From Towels To Gas, When Parsons' Sub, Sub, Sub-contractor Builds A Police Academy Where The Pipes Drip Raw Sewage On The Heads Of Army Cadets And Where Blackwater Investigates Itself And Finds It Acted Honorably. That's Just Corporations Doing What They Do And Iraq Is A Privatized War Zone So That's What You Get. Build A Frontier, You Get Cowboys And Robber Barons.

I See The Gap Ads As Being A Great Example Of How Branding Has Changed. Those Gap Campaigns Are Pop Culture. They've Been Incredibly Powerful. They Have Had The Kind Of Effect On Culture That A Hit Band Has. Just Look At The Gap's Khaki Swing Ads, Which Were Music Videos. They Had This Tremendous Impact On The Industry - Suddenly Everything Started Looking Like Gap Ads And It Became Difficult To Know Who Was Co-opting Whom And Who Was Creating Culture.

If You're Not Arguing, Your Coalition Isn't Wide Enough.

There's A Property In Panama Where Trump Has Collected Somewhere Around $30 Million Just From Selling His Name To This Property - It's Somewhere Between $30 Million And $50 Million. It Would Be So Easy For A Developer To Slap On An Extra $6 Million To A Trump Licensing Deal And Have That Be A Backdoor Bribe. Who Are We To Say What That Is Worth? It's So Ephemeral. And This Is The Appeal Of Selling Something As Ephemeral As A Brand Name, Is That It Can Be Inflated Beyond All Reason.

Regardless Of The Overall State Of The Economy, There Is Now A Large Enough Elite Made Up Of New Multi-millionaires And Billionaires For Wall Street To See The Group As "superconsumers," Able To Carry Consumer Demand All On Their Own.