Cash for Trash

For time it seemed that President Obama was poised to really "shake up the system". During his run to the White House many (myself included) anticipated that his administration would have "new New Deal" prize- winning economists like Jeffrey Sachs and Joseph Stiglitz leading an old-fashioned populist revolt against the corporate banksters.

Alas we had forgotten that after he was a community organizer Obama went to Harvard where good rebels go to die-- or come out with a deeper appreciation for Capitalism with a capital C. (the C stands for Collusion, Cronyism or Corruption-- take your pick or just go with all three.)

Eliot Spitzer elaborates in Slate Magazine: "the New York Federal Reserve is the first among equals. Unlike the Washington board of governors or the other regional fed branches, the N.Y. Fed is active virtually every day, changing the critical interest rates that determine the liquidity of the markets and the profitability of banks.

And who sat on the committee of this august financial chamber that appointed Tim Geithner? Why none other than Hank Greenberg, the then not-yet-disgraced chairman of AIG. Joining him were John Whitehead, chairman of Goldman Sachs; Walter Shipley, a former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, now JPMorgan Chase; and Pete Peterson, former chairman of Lehman Bros. No doubt these eminent personages have our national interests embedded in their altruistic psyches.

Which explains why when faced with the financial crisis born of the post-Enron virus the reserve board also brought in Dick Fuld, the former chairman of Lehman; Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE; Gene McGrath, the chairman of Con Edison; Ronay Menschel, the chairwoman of Phipps Houses and the wife of Richard Menschel, a former senior partner at Goldman Sachs. Makes you feel all warm and cuddly, doesn't it, knowing these egalitarian public servants are safeguarding the Treasury as well as our pensions and 401k's.

Among the many shady operations that went on at AIG under Greenberg's chairmanship was the use off shore entities to escape even the lax enforcement of U.S. insurance regulators and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Offshore tax havens such as Barbados and Bermuda were used to hide insider connections in supposedly "arms-length" deals shield profits from U.S. taxes.

As Naomi Klein, author of the must-read "Shock Doctrine", resignedly bewails: no matter how you slice it "we the people" have been been robbed by our royal princes yet again and we still can't afford the upkeep.

In Defense of Ralph

So what exactly are we on the "left" to make of our once beloved Ralph Nader? Many, including myself, have inveighed bitterly against him-- raging at his false presumption that Gore= Bush and suspecting that at the center of Ralph's contrarian flag was a haloed self-portrait. And though I part company with those who blame him for the country's near-fatal case of Bushitis I have grown disgusted with old Ralph popping up every four years to kneecap the latest Democrat running for president.

In 2004, desperate to expunge our neo-fascist Rovian plague, I railed against his capricious serial candidacies--rather than showing up like a Cassandra Jack-in-the-Box to fume quixotically about the octopedal corporate stranglehold on our government Ralph should roll up his sleeves and get to work on a viable third party. You know--one not sprouted from a Ralphian edict but-- (yes we can!)-- from the bottom up.

And yet, as we contemplate an Obama presidency, isn't it right to ask where we would be now had Ralph not been poking up his irritating pointy head to remind us there was no time to waste? That in fact the crisis he saw coming ruled out taking the time to build a new party. Was it not clear that with corporatists in charge of the Democrats right along with the Republicans we didn't have the luxury of settling for some token incremental change or being wishfully patient?

"[w]hen Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, warns against breaking down the barriers between banking and commerce and securities and industry, we'd better listen."

That caution issued from Ralph's sober prescient lips way back in 1998. At the time, as we all longingly remember, the dot-com bubble had yet to burst and the Clintonites were assuring us that all would be well. Times were flush, the Dow was soaring, and there was old Ralph sounding like an Afghan cleric at a Mexican fiesta:

"Hugh McCall, the head of NationsBank, says in a few years five to six giant financial conglomerates will dominate the nation. That's not healthy for Main Street; it's risky for Wall Street; and it's bad for the Federal Reserve and all the other forces in Washington who want to bail out these banks and financial conglomerates, when they're mismanaged, speculative, or overreach in terms of their risk taking. The key thing here is to have broad congressional hearings and more discussions on programs like this."

When you can see a train-wreck coming from such a distance I think you've earned the right to a respectful hearing. So what does it tell you about our "librul press" that the NYTimes would invite Bill Kristol to declaim from its pages-- a man who is proven wrong every time he opens his mouth-- and here poor Ralph is forced to say something crude just to get our attention.



For those who are offended by Ralph's characterization I say phooey! -- a pox on your outrage! We are facing a perilous point in our history as Naomi Klein (another impolite Cassandra) agrees: "(so far) there has been no nationalization... American taxpayers have gained no meaningful control over the banks... At Morgan Stanley, it looks as if much of the windfall will cover this year's bonuses. Citigroup has been hinting it will use its $25bn buying other banks, while John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told analysts: "At least for the next quarter, it's just going to be a cushion."

What, then, is the real purpose of the bail-out? My fear is this rush of dealmaking is something much more ambitious than a one-off gift to big business: that the Bush version of "partial nationalization" is rigged to turn the US treasury into a bottomless cash machine for the banks for years to come."

The corporate pirates have shown us their broadside and locked in the cannons. I, for one, did not fight to get Obama elected to see them sink our ship of "Hope" and steal our "Change" -- not without a scuffle. So Barack-- either lead us into battle or see your left flank get ready to Gore you. We'll be right behind that party-crashing prescient loudmouth, dear Ralph Nader.