Beggared by Greed

"The powers of financial capitalism have a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole"
--Carroll Quigly

Even as the workers of the world howl in fearful protest, the disaster capitalists are bent on the trifecta: the centralization of market finance, the disruption of state-based economies and the hobbling of freely-elected governments.

The collapse of the Soviet regime was supposed to usher in a less "ideological", more "pragmatic," (read "less welfare-oriented and more "market-oriented.") era in which democracy and trade would flourish. Instead neo-liberalism has hamstrung nation states by reducing their ability to function. Laissez-faire capitalism has actually mitigated against market rationality.

Is it truly a coincidence that upon voting on unreliable electronic machines for the very first time France elects a Hungarian neocon named Sarkozy? Whether he won the presidency fairly or not, his latest gambit proves he is a global-corporatist through and through.

From the Times: France heaped pressure on Gordon Brown last night by floating an ambitious plan for a €300 billion (£237 billion) bailout fund to rescue crippled banks across Europe.
...
Mr Sarkozy is seeking Mr Brown’s support before an emergency summit, scheduled tentatively for Saturday, with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. His proposal was greeted with scepticism in Britain and outright hostility in Germany. It appears to involve the creation of a Europe-wide emergency fund that would be used to prop up banks when national governments are unable to intervene.

Ms Merkel said that Germany could not and would not issue a blank cheque for all banks, “regardless of whether they behave in a responsible manner or not”.

One wonders just who would be in the clown suit running that show? Hank Paulson? The IMF?

We know how the good old USA got tricked into this mess. With the ironic indifference that typifies our rules-averse Republicans, the legislation that provided Wall Street its unbridled license to steal was named: "the Legal Certainty for Bank Products Act of 2000." It was John McCain's pick for Treasury Secretary, Phil "no more whining" Gramm who got it snuck in without hearings. And a lovely gift it was right before Christmas. Finally our noble financiers could legally fleece the public.

Under the heading of Title III, it ensured the "Legal Certainty for Swap Agreements," which successfully divorced the granters of subprime mortgage loans from any obligation to ever collect on them. Amazingly, the law went so far as to prohibit regulation of these new instruments that were being permitted after the financial industry mergers: "No provision of the Commodity Exchange Act shall apply to, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission shall not exercise regulatory authority with respect to, an identified banking product which had not been commonly offered, entered into, or provided in the United States by any bank on or before December 5, 2000."

Fast forward to five years later and Carl Levin's Senate subcommittee on investigations uncovers that UBS, a bank that subsequently hired Mr. Gramm as its vice-president, had set up offshore accounts to help American citizens hide at least $18 billion from the IRS. It is instructive to note, that while Gramm remains a viable choice as Secretary of the US Treasury, his appointment was far from well-received by the Europeans.

UBS and Enron: Letter to UBS (17.03.03)
Marcel Ospel
UBS
Bahnhofstrasse 45
CH-8001 Zurich, Switzerland


Dear Mr Ospel,

We are troubled by the recent appointment of former U.S. senator Phil Gramm as a Vice Chairman of UBS. Mr. Gramm’s professional and personal connections to Enron have disgraced his reputation. We believe that UBS’s association with Gramm seriously undermines your company’s professed commitment to corporate responsibility. At a time when investors and the general public need reassurance that our financial institutions are scrupulous, we ask UBS to place Mr. Gramm on leave until all criminal and civil investigations into Enron’s wrongdoing are complete.

During his tenure in Congress and as a member of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Gramm was the most vocal advocate for Enron, pushing legislation that removed government regulatory authority over the company and exposing it to negligence and fraud:

Sincerely,
Andreas Missbach, Erklärung von Bern
Public Citizen, Citizen Works, Transparency Switzerland, Greenpeace Schweiz, Stiftung für Konsumentenschutz, Schweizerisches Arbeiterhilfswerk SAH, Aktion Finanzplatz Schweiz, Solifonds (read the rest of the letter here)

So there you have it. A former US senator agrees to beggar his fellow citizens then scuttles off to his backers in Europe where he arranges for his cronies to hide their ill-gotten loot. And now, because Bush and the Republicans convinced half of the country we could have war and butter and still cut taxes we're all in hock up to our eyeballs and if we don't pay up our jobs will be lost and our dollars made junk.

Watching these bozos on FOX ridicule common sense one comes away wishing there were laws against greed and smug stupidity. From 2006!

Wipeout

The Iraq Invasion and Occupation was supposed to make it all better. The Iraqis would welcome the U.S. as liberators and in their undying gratitude give us their oil at rock bottom prices. The remarkable thing is-- it might actually have worked were it not for the fact that George W Bush has the diplomatic acumen of a 5th century Vandal and Dick Cheney loves money more than his own mother or even Donald Rumsfeld.

But thanks to cronyism, hubris and greed, along with some treasonous subterfuge,the war has been a debacle featuring incompetence, corruption, and brutality, all of mind-bending proportions and tragic consequences. When histories are written a hundred years hence on the remarkable decline of the American Empire, the war for Iraq will likely be judged as the greatest act of self-destruction the world has ever seen.

So here we are, five years after "Mission Accomplished", with an economy in the toilet, unemployment hovering at 13%, a government debt of nearly 10 trillion dollars and an annual deficit running @ $700 billion. The path to our swift disintegration we can trace to the great Ronald Reagan who convinced us and his clueless supplicant George W Bush., that by putting the poor in debt while pampering the rich we could eat cake every day and always have a good-paying job in the offing. His future vice-president George Bush Sr. described it aptly as "Voodoo Economics". Judging from his son, that may have been the last honest thing the man ever said.

So how has sailing a country of 300 million souls in a sea of red ink worked out? Well Fanny and Freddie, our two mortgage giants, are about to be shored up by more tax-payer credit, meanwhile Merrill Lynch and the Lehmann Brothers have just fallen on their knees, praying that our brave leverage king, Bank of America, will survive the bloodbath and be their savior. However, as much as I'd like to lay all the blame at the feet of Sir Ronald, credit for the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression belongs to the moronic Phil Gramm, he of the infamous Enron Loophole, and the peerless Alan Greenspan who can't resist blowing bubbles and apparently has never met with a white-shoe banker without experiencing the urge to genuflect.

All of which means that the fiscal discipline responsible Democrats tend to practice in public and in private-- you know the idea that it's better to invest in the public as well as in private to insure the country's future-- has just gone up in smoke-- blown with the wind just like the neo-con dream that we would conquer all of Arabia, drill oil from now until eternity and live happily ever after, singing praises to dear Dick and Donny.