social contract as conceived by liberal and democratically-minded political philosophers of the Enlightenment era, but to serve, protect, and strength finance capitalism in its current parasitic phase. This means that finance capital with the backing of the state as an instrument of absorbing capital through the fiscal structure has as its first priority to maintain the hegemony of the markets by allowing them to operate freely during the expansionary cycle of the economy, and providing capital to sustain them amid contracting cycles. Markets over states entails that social welfare must be sacrificed to preserve market hegemony, regardless if that entails rising poverty levels, downward social mobility, social unrest, and political instability that leads to the erosion of public confidence in democratic institutions.

2. CORPORATE WELFARE: Reducing social welfare andcentury, if only barriers to trade and capital transfers were removed. In 2011, poverty is higher not only in underdeveloped nations, but in the advanced ones as a result of the global recession of 2008-2011, with the US alone having more than 17% living below poverty standards, and EU about the same number and expected to rise both in US and Europe.

During the African Union summit in Ethiopia in February 2008, a number of African leaders linked the fallacies of neo-liberalism to the political violence in East Africa, something that would be repeated in 2011 across North Africa during the Arab Spring uprisings, and across Europe with the indignant mass protest movements, and in major US cities with the anti-Wall Street protests.

But let us argue that the grass