Yeah, but I have to water down the language or else there will be idiots crawling out of the woodwork.

People get all ornery when you call it fascism.

Don't mean to ride you on this point, but proper terms are very important. You can call it corporatism if you think fascism conjures up a black-and-white image of Il Duce, but calling it capitalism sets us back in terms of actually understanding the causes of our current crises, and hampers the already Sisyphean task of teaching people what capitalism actually means: a politico-economic system of laissez-faire and the protection of individual rights.

So, this is not a product of "late-capitalism income inequality"; it is a product of central banking in the U.S. and around the world, and their artificial tinkering with interest rates/the money supply for political expediency.

Isn't the fundamental piece of capitalism privately owned capital? What would we call a system of lasses-fair and protection of individual rights where those rights only included the right to rent capital from the state (not own it).

I believe the proper term is statism, no?

Collusion of big business and the state.

"Late" capitalism, which is to say, capitalism that has been around for a while, mostly is crony capitalism. There is a feedback loop between capitalism and democracy (and probably most other forms of government), a consequence of the positive correlation between wealth and power. A concentration of wealth leads to a concentration of power, which corrupts and degrades the democracy, leading to a further concentration of wealth and power, and so on. This is why treating capital markets as an end rather than a means is so dangerous.

a/k/a fascism