I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the Cleveland Plain Dealer today (Sunday) and saw a picture of a large crowd of people gathered on Wall Street on Saturday. Several organizations, led by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), sponsored a march calling for, among other demands, cuts in military spending and funding for bank bailouts.
The picture was opposite an article about how billionaire Warren Buffett has benefited from the bank bailout, with just 28 companies receiving more than 90 percent of the funds so far going to financial firms under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1755868.html
Turns out the opposite picture wasn’t of the UFPJ march...but of a pillow fight. Literally. It was “Pillow Fight Day in the Financial District” with more than 1000 people taking part in this 4th annual event in New York and 108 other cities sponsored by “newmindspace,” a group devoted to free public gatherings.
Maybe the media decided to cover the pillow fight rather than the march since they’re more familiar with political pillow fights than mass marches as responses to the global economic crisis.
Political pillow fighting is probably a good way to describe the response in Washington to the economic meltdown, outright theft, and further consolidation of financial power caused by the taxpayer bailout of insurance giant AIG, banking zombies JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sacks, Bank of America, Citibank, and Well Fargo-Wachovia, and other financial institutions.
Despite all the tough talking, there’s still been:
- no Administration or Congressional demands to account for where public tax dollars have gone,
- no demands that the leaders of the zombie banks be fired (if not jailed),
- no calls for a return of public dollars misused/misspent,
- no action to explore legal challenges to how bailout money was used by some banks to acquire other banks,
- no demand that the Administration follow the Prompt Corrective Action Law, passed after the savings and loan crisis, stipulating that severely undercapitalized banks be promptly put into receivership (i.e., nationalized/democratized). This federal law says insolvent banks must be promptly nationalized/democratized. Former senior Savings & Loan Regulator William Black spelled this out Friday night on Bill Moyers’ Journal http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html.
Black charges the Administration with covering up the full extent of the financial calamity http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/04/senior-s-regulator-says-government.html
This is unacceptable.
It’s time to end the Wall Street pillow fighting. Let “newmindspace” organize those.
It’s time to open up space in our minds to the urgent need to express outrage at what is happening...and to take it to the streets.
April 11 Protests in Cleveland and Columbus — Break Up the Banks
Rallies being planned all over the country at 2:00 PM
Decentralize – Nationalize - Reorganize
Sign up at www.anewwayforward.org
Cleveland, OH USA Willard Park
at corner of Lakeside and E. 9th
62 people plan to attend
Columbus, OH USA Ohio Statehouse
77 S High St
60 people plan to attend
If not near either of these two places, sign up to organize your own action. If April 11 is too soon, do it about Tax Day (April 15) or May Day (May 1).
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Democratize the 5 Biggest Banks / April 11 Protests
The article below is a clear, short, and sobering assessment of the origins of the global financial crisis and what specifically in the short-term should be done — to democratize the 5 largest banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank) which collectively “hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.” It’s all too easy to feel paralyzed that the problems and solutions are so large, complex and interwoven that nothing can be done to bring any real justice. This piece suggests otherwise — that a government take-over of just 5 banks and wiping out the nearly 200 TRILLION dollars of speculative derivatives will go a very long way to save citizen taxpayers and bank depositors.
As the article graphically asserts, “[c]ontinuing to pour taxpayer money into these five banks without changing their operating system, is tantamount to treating an alcoholic with unlimited free booze.”
Call or write your US Representative and Senators Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich. Tell them to democratize the 5 largest banks.
NOTE: National protests calling for Breaking Up the Banks are planned for Saturday, April 11 at 2 pm. Go to A New Way Forward www.anewwayforward.org to sign up. Protests are already planned for Cleveland and Columbus. There’s a way to sign up to organize a protest in your community. Please consider doing so.
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12953
Geithner’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: The Entire Global Financial System is at Risk
When the Solution to the Financial Crisis becomes the Cause
by F. William Engdahl
Global Research, March 30, 2009
US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has unveiled his long-awaited plan to put the US banking system back in order. In doing so, he has refused to tell the ‘dirty little secret’ of the present financial crisis. By refusing to do so, he is trying to save de facto bankrupt US banks that threaten to bring the entire global system down in a new more devastating phase of wealth destruction.
The Geithner Plan, his so-called Public-Private Partnership Investment Program or PPPIP, as we have noted previously is designed not to restore a healthy lending system which would funnel credit to business and consumers. Rather it is yet another intricate scheme to pour even more hundreds of billions directly to the leading banks and Wall Street firms responsible for the current mess in world credit markets without demanding they change their business model. Yet, one might say, won’t this eventually help the problem by getting the banks back to health?
Not the way the Obama Administration is proceeding. In defending his plan on US TV recently, Geithner, a protégé of Henry Kissinger who previously was CEO of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, argued that his intent was ‘not to sustain weak banks at the expense of strong.’ Yet this is precisely what the PPPIP does. The weak banks are the five largest banks in the system.
The ‘dirty little secret’ which Geithner is going to great degrees to obscure from the public is very simple. There are only at most perhaps five US banks which are the source of the toxic poison that is causing such dislocation in the world financial system. What Geithner is desperately trying to protect is that reality. The heart of the present problem and the reason ordinary loan losses as in prior bank crises are not the problem, is a variety of exotic financial derivatives, most especially so-called Credit Default Swaps.
In 2000 the Clinton Administration then-Treasury Secretary was a man named Larry Summers. Summers had just been promoted from No. 2 under Wall Street Goldman Sachs banker Robert Rubin to be No. 1 when Rubin left Washington to take up the post of Vice Chairman of Citigroup. As I describe in detail in my new book, Power of Money: The Rise and Fall of the American Century, to be released this summer, Summers convinced President Bill Clinton to sign several Republican bills into law which opened the floodgates for banks to abuse their powers. The fact that the Wall Street big banks spent some $5 billion in lobbying for these changes after 1998 was likely not lost on Clinton.
One significant law was the repeal of the 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited mergers of commercial banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs. A second law backed by Treasury Secretary Summers in 2000 was an obscure but deadly important Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. That law prevented the responsible US Government regulatory agency, Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC), from having any oversight over the trading of financial derivatives. The new CFMA law stipulated that so-called Over-the-Counter (OTC) derivatives like Credit Default Swaps, such as those involved in the AIG insurance disaster, (which investor Warren Buffett once called ‘weapons of mass financial destruction’), be free from Government regulation.
At the time Summers was busy opening the floodgates of financial abuse for the Wall Street Money Trust, his assistant was none other than Tim Geithner, the man who today is US Treasury Secretary. Today, Geithner’s old boss, Larry Summers, is President Obama’s chief economic adviser, as head of the White House Economic Council. To have Geithner and Summers responsible for cleaning up the financial mess is tantamount to putting the proverbial fox in to guard the henhouse.
The ‘Dirty Little Secret’
What Geithner does not want the public to understand, his ‘dirty little secret’ is that the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000 allowed the creation of a tiny handful of banks that would virtually monopolize key parts of the global ‘off-balance sheet’ or Over-The-Counter derivatives issuance.
Today five US banks according to data in the just-released Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity, hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.
The five are, in declining order of importance: JPMorgan Chase which holds a staggering $88 trillion in derivatives (€66 trillion!). Morgan Chase is followed by Bank of America with $38 trillion in derivatives, and Citibank with $32 trillion. Number four in the derivatives sweepstakes is Goldman Sachs with a ‘mere’ $30 trillion in derivatives. Number five, the merged Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank, drops dramatically in size to $5 trillion. Number six, Britain’s HSBC Bank USA has $3.7 trillion.
After that the size of US bank exposure to these explosive off-balance-sheet unregulated derivative obligations falls off dramatically. Just to underscore the magnitude, trillion is written 1,000,000,000,000. Continuing to pour taxpayer money into these five banks without changing their operating system, is tantamount to treating an alcoholic with unlimited free booze.
The Government bailouts of AIG to over $180 billion to date has primarily gone to pay off AIG’s Credit Default Swap obligations to counterparty gamblers Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, the banks who believe they are ‘too big to fail.’ In effect, these five institutions today believe they are so large that they can dictate the policy of the Federal Government. Some have called it a bankers’ coup d’etat. It definitely is not healthy.
This is Geithner’s and Wall Street’s Dirty Little Secret that they desperately try to hide because it would focus voter attention on real solutions. The Federal Government has long had laws in place to deal with insolvent banks. The FDIC places the bank into receivership, its assets and liabilities are sorted out by independent audit. The irresponsible management is purged, stockholders lose and the purged bank is eventually split into smaller units and when healthy, sold to the public. The power of the five mega banks to blackmail the entire nation would thereby be cut down to size. Ooohh. Uh Huh?
This is what Wall Street and Geithner are frantically trying to prevent. The problem is concentrated in these five large banks. The financial cancer must be isolated and contained by Federal agency in order for the host, the real economy, to return to healthy function.
This is what must be put into bankruptcy receivership, or nationalization. Every hour the Obama Administration delays that, and refuses to demand full independent government audit of the true solvency or insolvency of these five or so banks, inevitably costs to the US and to the world economy will snowball as derivatives losses explode. That is pre-programmed as worsening economic recession mean corporate bankruptcies are rising, home mortgage defaults are exploding, unemployment is shooting up. This is a situation that is deliberately being allowed to run out of (responsible Government) control by Treasury Secretary Geithner, Summers and ultimately the President, whether or not he has taken the time to grasp what is at stake.
Once the five problem banks have been put into isolation by the FDIC and the Treasury, the Administration must introduce legislation to immediately repeal the Larry Summers bank deregulation including restore Glass-Steagall and repeal the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that allowed the present criminal abuse of the banking trust. Then serious financial reform can begin to be discussed, starting with steps to ‘federalize’ the Federal Reserve and take the power of money out of the hands of private bankers such as JP Morgan Chase, Citibank or Goldman Sachs.
F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order; and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca). His newest book, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Third Millennium Press) is due out at end of April. He may be reached through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
As the article graphically asserts, “[c]ontinuing to pour taxpayer money into these five banks without changing their operating system, is tantamount to treating an alcoholic with unlimited free booze.”
Call or write your US Representative and Senators Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich. Tell them to democratize the 5 largest banks.
NOTE: National protests calling for Breaking Up the Banks are planned for Saturday, April 11 at 2 pm. Go to A New Way Forward www.anewwayforward.org to sign up. Protests are already planned for Cleveland and Columbus. There’s a way to sign up to organize a protest in your community. Please consider doing so.
--------
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12953
Geithner’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: The Entire Global Financial System is at Risk
When the Solution to the Financial Crisis becomes the Cause
by F. William Engdahl
Global Research, March 30, 2009
US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has unveiled his long-awaited plan to put the US banking system back in order. In doing so, he has refused to tell the ‘dirty little secret’ of the present financial crisis. By refusing to do so, he is trying to save de facto bankrupt US banks that threaten to bring the entire global system down in a new more devastating phase of wealth destruction.
The Geithner Plan, his so-called Public-Private Partnership Investment Program or PPPIP, as we have noted previously is designed not to restore a healthy lending system which would funnel credit to business and consumers. Rather it is yet another intricate scheme to pour even more hundreds of billions directly to the leading banks and Wall Street firms responsible for the current mess in world credit markets without demanding they change their business model. Yet, one might say, won’t this eventually help the problem by getting the banks back to health?
Not the way the Obama Administration is proceeding. In defending his plan on US TV recently, Geithner, a protégé of Henry Kissinger who previously was CEO of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, argued that his intent was ‘not to sustain weak banks at the expense of strong.’ Yet this is precisely what the PPPIP does. The weak banks are the five largest banks in the system.
The ‘dirty little secret’ which Geithner is going to great degrees to obscure from the public is very simple. There are only at most perhaps five US banks which are the source of the toxic poison that is causing such dislocation in the world financial system. What Geithner is desperately trying to protect is that reality. The heart of the present problem and the reason ordinary loan losses as in prior bank crises are not the problem, is a variety of exotic financial derivatives, most especially so-called Credit Default Swaps.
In 2000 the Clinton Administration then-Treasury Secretary was a man named Larry Summers. Summers had just been promoted from No. 2 under Wall Street Goldman Sachs banker Robert Rubin to be No. 1 when Rubin left Washington to take up the post of Vice Chairman of Citigroup. As I describe in detail in my new book, Power of Money: The Rise and Fall of the American Century, to be released this summer, Summers convinced President Bill Clinton to sign several Republican bills into law which opened the floodgates for banks to abuse their powers. The fact that the Wall Street big banks spent some $5 billion in lobbying for these changes after 1998 was likely not lost on Clinton.
One significant law was the repeal of the 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited mergers of commercial banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs. A second law backed by Treasury Secretary Summers in 2000 was an obscure but deadly important Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. That law prevented the responsible US Government regulatory agency, Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC), from having any oversight over the trading of financial derivatives. The new CFMA law stipulated that so-called Over-the-Counter (OTC) derivatives like Credit Default Swaps, such as those involved in the AIG insurance disaster, (which investor Warren Buffett once called ‘weapons of mass financial destruction’), be free from Government regulation.
At the time Summers was busy opening the floodgates of financial abuse for the Wall Street Money Trust, his assistant was none other than Tim Geithner, the man who today is US Treasury Secretary. Today, Geithner’s old boss, Larry Summers, is President Obama’s chief economic adviser, as head of the White House Economic Council. To have Geithner and Summers responsible for cleaning up the financial mess is tantamount to putting the proverbial fox in to guard the henhouse.
The ‘Dirty Little Secret’
What Geithner does not want the public to understand, his ‘dirty little secret’ is that the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000 allowed the creation of a tiny handful of banks that would virtually monopolize key parts of the global ‘off-balance sheet’ or Over-The-Counter derivatives issuance.
Today five US banks according to data in the just-released Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity, hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.
The five are, in declining order of importance: JPMorgan Chase which holds a staggering $88 trillion in derivatives (€66 trillion!). Morgan Chase is followed by Bank of America with $38 trillion in derivatives, and Citibank with $32 trillion. Number four in the derivatives sweepstakes is Goldman Sachs with a ‘mere’ $30 trillion in derivatives. Number five, the merged Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank, drops dramatically in size to $5 trillion. Number six, Britain’s HSBC Bank USA has $3.7 trillion.
After that the size of US bank exposure to these explosive off-balance-sheet unregulated derivative obligations falls off dramatically. Just to underscore the magnitude, trillion is written 1,000,000,000,000. Continuing to pour taxpayer money into these five banks without changing their operating system, is tantamount to treating an alcoholic with unlimited free booze.
The Government bailouts of AIG to over $180 billion to date has primarily gone to pay off AIG’s Credit Default Swap obligations to counterparty gamblers Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, the banks who believe they are ‘too big to fail.’ In effect, these five institutions today believe they are so large that they can dictate the policy of the Federal Government. Some have called it a bankers’ coup d’etat. It definitely is not healthy.
This is Geithner’s and Wall Street’s Dirty Little Secret that they desperately try to hide because it would focus voter attention on real solutions. The Federal Government has long had laws in place to deal with insolvent banks. The FDIC places the bank into receivership, its assets and liabilities are sorted out by independent audit. The irresponsible management is purged, stockholders lose and the purged bank is eventually split into smaller units and when healthy, sold to the public. The power of the five mega banks to blackmail the entire nation would thereby be cut down to size. Ooohh. Uh Huh?
This is what Wall Street and Geithner are frantically trying to prevent. The problem is concentrated in these five large banks. The financial cancer must be isolated and contained by Federal agency in order for the host, the real economy, to return to healthy function.
This is what must be put into bankruptcy receivership, or nationalization. Every hour the Obama Administration delays that, and refuses to demand full independent government audit of the true solvency or insolvency of these five or so banks, inevitably costs to the US and to the world economy will snowball as derivatives losses explode. That is pre-programmed as worsening economic recession mean corporate bankruptcies are rising, home mortgage defaults are exploding, unemployment is shooting up. This is a situation that is deliberately being allowed to run out of (responsible Government) control by Treasury Secretary Geithner, Summers and ultimately the President, whether or not he has taken the time to grasp what is at stake.
Once the five problem banks have been put into isolation by the FDIC and the Treasury, the Administration must introduce legislation to immediately repeal the Larry Summers bank deregulation including restore Glass-Steagall and repeal the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that allowed the present criminal abuse of the banking trust. Then serious financial reform can begin to be discussed, starting with steps to ‘federalize’ the Federal Reserve and take the power of money out of the hands of private bankers such as JP Morgan Chase, Citibank or Goldman Sachs.
F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order; and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca). His newest book, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Third Millennium Press) is due out at end of April. He may be reached through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Restoring Human Balance: The Employee Free Choice Act
The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker related justice, peace and humanitarian organization. Quakers believe in the dignity and worth of every person regardless of religion, race, class, gender, nationality, physical ability, or sexual orientation.
The AFSC works to see that no person is discriminated – none. This includes those in a workplace who are in an unequal power relationship with their employer. That is, a worker who feels he or she is not being paid fairly, not receiving adequate benefits and/or not working in a safe environment. To be treated with respect and dignity, a worker needs to join in union with others who face common grievances to collectively approach their employer. To advocate for justice. To demand fairness. To work for their common health, safety and welfare.
The Employee Free Choice Act restores some balance to what is a grossly unbalanced relationship between employee and employer. It’s about the right to decide. The right to choose. The right to be heard. The right to possess the ability and power to have a real role in shaping a part of their lives – where they work. It’s a right we should all have. When we do, we feel authentic, empowered, and human. We are more open to being creative, dedicated, compassionate, serving.
Consider two groups of people in our community, state and nation.
One group is workers who want to form a union within a corporation. The barriers and hurdles are enormous. Corporate intimidation, harassment, and coercion are common. Corporations fire workers who try to form unions and bargain for economic well-being. They deny workers the ability to exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly and association since the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply on corporate private property. Yet they exercise their own Constitutionally guaranteed free speech rights to prevent workers from signing cards and holding an election. And those are just some of the corporate hurdles. Never mind government hurdles at recognition and certification. No wonder only 12% of workers in this nation are members of unions.
The second group is a few people who want to form a business corporation. What do they have to do? Four things. Obtain a form from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. Fill it out. Write out a check. Send it in. That’s it. Voila. Just like that, this group of people have become a business corporation with Constitutionally protected “personhood” rights and with liability protections that human persons couldn’t dream of. For those who place the game of chess, it’s the equivalent of a pawn making it to the opposite end of the board and being transformed into a Queen with powers and rights that we human pawns simply don’t have. Oh, and by the way, powers and rights that were never intended… but that’s another story.
The Employee Free Choice Act is a necessary step in the direction of justice and dignity. The bill’s sponsors and endorsers should be thanked and encouraged to support this bill with no watered down amendments.
But it is only a step. There is still a very long way to go to create democracy and self-governance in our society.
In evaluating this bill and others that come thereafter, here’s one simple measuring stick: Does it increase the ability of people to make fundamental decisions affecting their lives, communities and environment? In other words, does a bill or proposal increase the power of people to decide for themselves? If it does, it should be supported. If not, it should be opposed.
The right to decide is enhanced by the Employee Free Choice Act.
Thanks to its supporters. Thanks to those at the grassroots who have brought it to Congress and have and will apply pressure for its passage -- . the sort of pressure that in the past has taken the form of social movements for dignity and rights.
May the Employee Free Choice Act pass. May it be just the beginning.
The AFSC works to see that no person is discriminated – none. This includes those in a workplace who are in an unequal power relationship with their employer. That is, a worker who feels he or she is not being paid fairly, not receiving adequate benefits and/or not working in a safe environment. To be treated with respect and dignity, a worker needs to join in union with others who face common grievances to collectively approach their employer. To advocate for justice. To demand fairness. To work for their common health, safety and welfare.
The Employee Free Choice Act restores some balance to what is a grossly unbalanced relationship between employee and employer. It’s about the right to decide. The right to choose. The right to be heard. The right to possess the ability and power to have a real role in shaping a part of their lives – where they work. It’s a right we should all have. When we do, we feel authentic, empowered, and human. We are more open to being creative, dedicated, compassionate, serving.
Consider two groups of people in our community, state and nation.
One group is workers who want to form a union within a corporation. The barriers and hurdles are enormous. Corporate intimidation, harassment, and coercion are common. Corporations fire workers who try to form unions and bargain for economic well-being. They deny workers the ability to exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly and association since the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply on corporate private property. Yet they exercise their own Constitutionally guaranteed free speech rights to prevent workers from signing cards and holding an election. And those are just some of the corporate hurdles. Never mind government hurdles at recognition and certification. No wonder only 12% of workers in this nation are members of unions.
The second group is a few people who want to form a business corporation. What do they have to do? Four things. Obtain a form from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. Fill it out. Write out a check. Send it in. That’s it. Voila. Just like that, this group of people have become a business corporation with Constitutionally protected “personhood” rights and with liability protections that human persons couldn’t dream of. For those who place the game of chess, it’s the equivalent of a pawn making it to the opposite end of the board and being transformed into a Queen with powers and rights that we human pawns simply don’t have. Oh, and by the way, powers and rights that were never intended… but that’s another story.
The Employee Free Choice Act is a necessary step in the direction of justice and dignity. The bill’s sponsors and endorsers should be thanked and encouraged to support this bill with no watered down amendments.
But it is only a step. There is still a very long way to go to create democracy and self-governance in our society.
In evaluating this bill and others that come thereafter, here’s one simple measuring stick: Does it increase the ability of people to make fundamental decisions affecting their lives, communities and environment? In other words, does a bill or proposal increase the power of people to decide for themselves? If it does, it should be supported. If not, it should be opposed.
The right to decide is enhanced by the Employee Free Choice Act.
Thanks to its supporters. Thanks to those at the grassroots who have brought it to Congress and have and will apply pressure for its passage -- . the sort of pressure that in the past has taken the form of social movements for dignity and rights.
May the Employee Free Choice Act pass. May it be just the beginning.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Banking on Fear
The financial forces responsible for the pillage of what’s left of our national economy and personal assets have learned that playing...or preying... on people’s fear is a better bet than investing in more credit-default swaps or collateralized debt obligations.
Fear is money in the bank.
Big banks, insurance companies, and their friends and supporters in the Obama Administration and Congress are using fear to paralyze critically conscious people, including way too many activists, into mental and mobilizing submission. At stake is at least another $750 billion contained in the fiscal year 2010 federal budget proposed by the Obama Administration.
Throwing hundreds of billions of more tax dollars at American Insurance Group (AIG), Goldman Sacks, Citibank, Bank of America, J.P Morgan Chase and other financial behemoths (aka Zombie Banks) is portrayed as inevitable. Why? Not bailing out these institutions and their CEOs for the global financial crisis would cause, according to these financial geniuses, a worse global financial crisis. It would be chaos. Economic collapse. Massive poverty. More homelessness. Widespread unemployment. Starvation.
The FIRES (finance, insurance, real estate) corporations are simply “too big to fail.”
According to whom?
- The same financial paragons who advocated for massive financial de-regulation over the last decade?
- The same money men (and women) who claimed investing trillions in speculative “products” like derivatives rather than in companies that actually produce goods and services, was the path to perpetual growth and profit?
- The same financial wizards (some of whom occupy important roles in the Obama administration) who built their economic health and claim the health of the larger economy is built on more and more and more debt?
- The same “experts” who never saw coming the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression...if not worse?
These are the people we’re supposed to trust.
The banks are banking on fear to bank more billions. They are counting on us not to think, ask questions, demand answers, and place the burden of proof on those making these claims. Just go along, shut up, and believe.
US taxpayers have already poured or committed to pour $8.5 trillion in capital injections, guaranteed debt, and loans into the financial system — a system that is not designed to invest money in productive ventures, helping people face home foreclosures, assisting people who’ve amassed huge credit card debt, or help communities function as communities. Rather, the mega banks and AIGs of the world are set up to rake in profits from the unreal world of financial bets, speculations, hedges and other gimmicks that are parasitic yet legal. More tax dollars will go simply to pay off these bets, speculations, hedges and gimmicks that have gone bad. They enrich the CEOs and shareholders. It’s legalized theft.
And who are these shareholders? Overall, the richest 1% of the nation’s population in 2004 held $1.9 trillion in stocks, almost equal to the other 99%.
Bailing out Wall Street is bailing out the super rich. Bailing out banks and insurance companies further widens the already considerable gap between rich and poor...and increases their political power.
The Obama approach to financial institutions has been to socialize the losses and privatize the gains...just like the Bush approach. Losses are paid by taxpayers. Gains are banked by the banks and their mega investors.
The latest Obama/Geithner plan to create a US “bad bank” to buy up toxic assets from banks is merely a recycled idea from former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The latest “cash for trash” scam involves the US government lending private investors money to buy virtually worthless pieces of paper (misnamed “assets”) from banks. If the values of the pieces of paper eventually increase, the investors profit. If they plummet even more than they already have, the investors can walk.
Where can the rest of us get such a one-way deal?
Government takeover of the Zombie “too big too fail but too insolvent to be saved” financial institutions is the best of what are all bad choices. Democratization of financial institutions should be the one and only message to Congress. Once democratized, the public though the government should (for starters):
- Fire and bring to justice all the leadership responsible for triggering what has become the Global Financial Crisis.
- Audit where previous bailout funds went and recover those funds mis-spent on CEO bonuses and acquisition of other financial institutions.
- Wipe out all the financial “bad assets” -- the richest 1% investors who own virtually all of these will have to suffer the consequences of their risky past decisions.
- Use funds the government was going to give the financial corporations to directly help those facing foreclosures and offer low- or no-interest loans to help get the economy moving.
The super-rich investors and corporations who own the trillions of “bad assets” are terrified. Public outrage against the legalized heist of our financial present and future, currently personified by massive AIG bonuses, is real. It’s not a long intellectual bridge from public outrage to calls for real public control.
The big banks and insurance conglomerates have responded by trying to shift their terror onto us — that public control of money and credit is a bridge to political and economic devastation.
Consider the sources.
Form your own opinions based on studying the issue.
Read articles linked below, in previous posts, and from other sources.
Don’t be fooled.
Don’t be afraid.
-------------------------
http://blog.cleveland.com/business/2009/03/lawmakers_soften_opposition_to.html#more
Lawmakers soften opposition to bonuses at bailout companies
Posted by Associated Press March 25, 2009
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/1
The Big Takeover
The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution
MATT TAIBBI
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12517
America's Fiscal Collapse
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 2, 2009
http://www.truthout.org/031909J
Financial Reports Show Five Biggest Banks Face Huge Loss Risk
Monday 09 March 2009
by: Greg Gordon and Kevin G. Hall
Fear is money in the bank.
Big banks, insurance companies, and their friends and supporters in the Obama Administration and Congress are using fear to paralyze critically conscious people, including way too many activists, into mental and mobilizing submission. At stake is at least another $750 billion contained in the fiscal year 2010 federal budget proposed by the Obama Administration.
Throwing hundreds of billions of more tax dollars at American Insurance Group (AIG), Goldman Sacks, Citibank, Bank of America, J.P Morgan Chase and other financial behemoths (aka Zombie Banks) is portrayed as inevitable. Why? Not bailing out these institutions and their CEOs for the global financial crisis would cause, according to these financial geniuses, a worse global financial crisis. It would be chaos. Economic collapse. Massive poverty. More homelessness. Widespread unemployment. Starvation.
The FIRES (finance, insurance, real estate) corporations are simply “too big to fail.”
According to whom?
- The same financial paragons who advocated for massive financial de-regulation over the last decade?
- The same money men (and women) who claimed investing trillions in speculative “products” like derivatives rather than in companies that actually produce goods and services, was the path to perpetual growth and profit?
- The same financial wizards (some of whom occupy important roles in the Obama administration) who built their economic health and claim the health of the larger economy is built on more and more and more debt?
- The same “experts” who never saw coming the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression...if not worse?
These are the people we’re supposed to trust.
The banks are banking on fear to bank more billions. They are counting on us not to think, ask questions, demand answers, and place the burden of proof on those making these claims. Just go along, shut up, and believe.
US taxpayers have already poured or committed to pour $8.5 trillion in capital injections, guaranteed debt, and loans into the financial system — a system that is not designed to invest money in productive ventures, helping people face home foreclosures, assisting people who’ve amassed huge credit card debt, or help communities function as communities. Rather, the mega banks and AIGs of the world are set up to rake in profits from the unreal world of financial bets, speculations, hedges and other gimmicks that are parasitic yet legal. More tax dollars will go simply to pay off these bets, speculations, hedges and gimmicks that have gone bad. They enrich the CEOs and shareholders. It’s legalized theft.
And who are these shareholders? Overall, the richest 1% of the nation’s population in 2004 held $1.9 trillion in stocks, almost equal to the other 99%.
Bailing out Wall Street is bailing out the super rich. Bailing out banks and insurance companies further widens the already considerable gap between rich and poor...and increases their political power.
The Obama approach to financial institutions has been to socialize the losses and privatize the gains...just like the Bush approach. Losses are paid by taxpayers. Gains are banked by the banks and their mega investors.
The latest Obama/Geithner plan to create a US “bad bank” to buy up toxic assets from banks is merely a recycled idea from former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The latest “cash for trash” scam involves the US government lending private investors money to buy virtually worthless pieces of paper (misnamed “assets”) from banks. If the values of the pieces of paper eventually increase, the investors profit. If they plummet even more than they already have, the investors can walk.
Where can the rest of us get such a one-way deal?
Government takeover of the Zombie “too big too fail but too insolvent to be saved” financial institutions is the best of what are all bad choices. Democratization of financial institutions should be the one and only message to Congress. Once democratized, the public though the government should (for starters):
- Fire and bring to justice all the leadership responsible for triggering what has become the Global Financial Crisis.
- Audit where previous bailout funds went and recover those funds mis-spent on CEO bonuses and acquisition of other financial institutions.
- Wipe out all the financial “bad assets” -- the richest 1% investors who own virtually all of these will have to suffer the consequences of their risky past decisions.
- Use funds the government was going to give the financial corporations to directly help those facing foreclosures and offer low- or no-interest loans to help get the economy moving.
The super-rich investors and corporations who own the trillions of “bad assets” are terrified. Public outrage against the legalized heist of our financial present and future, currently personified by massive AIG bonuses, is real. It’s not a long intellectual bridge from public outrage to calls for real public control.
The big banks and insurance conglomerates have responded by trying to shift their terror onto us — that public control of money and credit is a bridge to political and economic devastation.
Consider the sources.
Form your own opinions based on studying the issue.
Read articles linked below, in previous posts, and from other sources.
Don’t be fooled.
Don’t be afraid.
-------------------------
http://blog.cleveland.com/business/2009/03/lawmakers_soften_opposition_to.html#more
Lawmakers soften opposition to bonuses at bailout companies
Posted by Associated Press March 25, 2009
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/1
The Big Takeover
The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution
MATT TAIBBI
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12517
America's Fiscal Collapse
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 2, 2009
http://www.truthout.org/031909J
Financial Reports Show Five Biggest Banks Face Huge Loss Risk
Monday 09 March 2009
by: Greg Gordon and Kevin G. Hall
Sunday, March 22, 2009
On Revolution and Counter-Revolution
Many people do not realize that we have gone though, and are now going through, a cycle of revolution and counter-revolution. This cycle can be broken down into three waves.
First Wave 1910-1936
Mexico, Russia, Germany, Hungary, Spain, potential revolution in Italy, serious unrest in Argentina, Brazil. General strikes throughout the world.
Second Wave 1958-1980
Cuba, France, Portugal, Nicaragua. Serious revolt in Italy, Argentina, Chile. General strikes in Belgium, Canada.
Third Wave 2000 -
Venezuela, Bolivia, revolt in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Iceland. Serious unrest in Greece, France.
Each wave, up till the present one, terminated in a period of reaction
1. 1922 – 1957 Fascism and Stalinism, then domination by US imperialism and counter-revolution.
2. 1973 – 1999 US-sponsored military coups in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, terrorism in Central America, neoliberal attacks on workers living standards and rights throughout the world.
Dates are approximate and much overlapping occurs. Furthermore, a revolutionary period can contain reactionary triumphs and a period of reaction can see the occurrence of progressive change or revolution. In spite of these limitations, there is a definite cycle of revolution and counter-revolutionary reaction. The failure to understand the existence of these long waves leads both to pessimism on the part of progressive forces (chatter about the cooptation of working class) and triumphalism on the part of reactionaries. (the "end of history", obsolescence of socialism.)
There are also differences between the revolutionary waves. In the past, revolutionary regimes were installed, or counter-revolution triumphed, in a matter of months. Today, the revolutionary process is much more protracted, as we see in Venezuela and Bolivia where a revolutionary situation has existed for years. In Argentina, though much of the militant working class struggle since 2001 has been recuperated by populism, the class as a whole has not been defeated as it was in 1976. In certain ways there has been a merging of reform and revolution.
The second difference is the weakness of US imperialism. Being tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, it suffers from imperial overstretch and the hostility of the population of its supposed allies. It is unable to terrorize Latin America "back into the fold", as it did only 20 years ago. This allows the revolutionary process time and space to develop autonomously.
The third difference is the severity of the economic crisis and the fact that it is in reality a triple crisis – economic-energy and environmental. Capitalism has never faced a crisis of this magnitude before. This limits its ability to intervene and brings unrest into the imperial heartlands.
The chances of success have never been greater. The stakes have never been higher. What will happen?
First Wave 1910-1936
Mexico, Russia, Germany, Hungary, Spain, potential revolution in Italy, serious unrest in Argentina, Brazil. General strikes throughout the world.
Second Wave 1958-1980
Cuba, France, Portugal, Nicaragua. Serious revolt in Italy, Argentina, Chile. General strikes in Belgium, Canada.
Third Wave 2000 -
Venezuela, Bolivia, revolt in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Iceland. Serious unrest in Greece, France.
Each wave, up till the present one, terminated in a period of reaction
1. 1922 – 1957 Fascism and Stalinism, then domination by US imperialism and counter-revolution.
2. 1973 – 1999 US-sponsored military coups in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, terrorism in Central America, neoliberal attacks on workers living standards and rights throughout the world.
Dates are approximate and much overlapping occurs. Furthermore, a revolutionary period can contain reactionary triumphs and a period of reaction can see the occurrence of progressive change or revolution. In spite of these limitations, there is a definite cycle of revolution and counter-revolutionary reaction. The failure to understand the existence of these long waves leads both to pessimism on the part of progressive forces (chatter about the cooptation of working class) and triumphalism on the part of reactionaries. (the "end of history", obsolescence of socialism.)
There are also differences between the revolutionary waves. In the past, revolutionary regimes were installed, or counter-revolution triumphed, in a matter of months. Today, the revolutionary process is much more protracted, as we see in Venezuela and Bolivia where a revolutionary situation has existed for years. In Argentina, though much of the militant working class struggle since 2001 has been recuperated by populism, the class as a whole has not been defeated as it was in 1976. In certain ways there has been a merging of reform and revolution.
The second difference is the weakness of US imperialism. Being tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, it suffers from imperial overstretch and the hostility of the population of its supposed allies. It is unable to terrorize Latin America "back into the fold", as it did only 20 years ago. This allows the revolutionary process time and space to develop autonomously.
The third difference is the severity of the economic crisis and the fact that it is in reality a triple crisis – economic-energy and environmental. Capitalism has never faced a crisis of this magnitude before. This limits its ability to intervene and brings unrest into the imperial heartlands.
The chances of success have never been greater. The stakes have never been higher. What will happen?
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Massive French Protests and Ontario Factory Occupation
Yesterday, March 19, three million French workers demonstrated across France against lay-offs, government cut-backs and attempts to make working people pay for the bosses crisis. Three of five labour federations, SUD, Force Ouvrier and the syndicalist CNT-F, called for a general strike. See
See http://www.humanite.fr/La-preuve-par-trois-millions
As well, workers in Windsor Ontario at the Aradco auto parts plant engaged in a two day occupation and hopefully won at least a partial victory. See http://www.marxist.com/canadian-workers-occupy-auto-factory.htm
Beware the Madoff Diversion
Richard Grossman is one of two people who came to Ohio more than a decade ago and offered a “Rethinking the Corporation, Rethinking Democracy” weekend workshop that sparked our subsequent Ohio-based education, advocacy, and organizing on corporate constitutional rights. A brilliant guy and a fine piece!
------------
http://www.truthout.org/031809B
Beware the Madoff Diversion!
Wednesday 18 March 2009
by: Richard Grossman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sure, there are crooks out there. But the overwhelming majority of actions by corporate directors and managers that have created today's messes have been legal.
Not only legal, but also widely regarded as necessary and essential to sustain the American Way of Life. To put food on our tables. To heat our homes. To provide jobs. To defend liberty and freedom ...
Simply put: Giant business and financial corporations govern. The few who run them make the governing decisions that dictate people's work, living conditions, health and the nature of our communities.
Business and financial corporations are not simply "market players." Although, in legal terms, corporations are mere "fictions of the law," they function as political forces. They concentrate wealth and power so their directors and managers can impose their values upon communities, the nation, the earth.
Corporate directors and managers have long defined how people live, what people do. Sometimes, they take their paychecks from their corporations, sometimes, from our governments. For generations, they've been writing our laws, propagandizing our children, dictating policy, plundering the planet. To gain such power, they long ago got Congress, federal judges and state legislatures to wrap their corporate bodies in the Constitution of the United States. To bestow upon their corporate "fictions" the authority to govern.
Armed with "freedom of speech," "due process," "equal protection of the law," the "commerce clause," "the contracts clause," and other constitutional powers, corporate directors and managers have been wielding the law to deny people's most fundamental human rights.
Corporate directors and managers have been making "private" decisions, which in an authentic democracy must be made by people in community via democratic processes.
Their real bottom line is not that their corporations are "just too big to fail." It's that without giant corporations, we helpless human earthlings could do nothing to meet our needs. That we would languish freezing, starving, unemployed, unentertained, vulnerable, in the dark.
After the great savings and loan thefts, after the great WorldCom and Enron Corporation thefts - after every financial cataclysm of the past century - people have been assured that the problem was "greed and excess."
There were always pundits and politicians galore to declare "greed and excess," just as there were always Madoffs galore to personify such evils. So, as night followed day, legislatures passed laws to regulate "greed and excess." And then they told us to go home and relax ... everything would be O.K.
Sure, Madoff and his ilk are major crooks. They've caused great harm to many people. There are laws aplenty to deal with such obvious crooks - so they'll end up in jail and good riddance.
But after the Madoffs of every generation are all locked up, most of the corporate directors and managers who "legally" plunged the nation into these messes continue governing over the nation. They keep instructing people that the source of the nation's problems is "greed and excesses," and "crooks." They keep spending the people's money to set things right. And they keep writing We the People's laws.
Isn't that what's happening today?
Corporate directors and managers count on our being desperate to return to the way things were, on our not changing who's calling the shots or the laws of the land, which have long enabled a corporate class to rule.
So, let's not let ourselves be distracted by a few high-profile crooks on perp walks. Let's beware "greed and excess." Instead, we can scrutinize constitutional law and statute law and judge made law that have long empowered a relative handful of corporate directors and managers to deny We the People's most fundamental rights ... to prevent us from governing ourselves.
To stop corporate cataclysms from crashing down upon us and the earth over and over and over again, and to drive human-friendly, planet-loving values into law and policy, We the People can rewrite basic constitutional doctrines regarding corporate "fictions," flesh and blood human beings and earth rights.
To do this, we'll have to assume the authority to govern ourselves.
Isn't that a revolutionary idea?
---------
Grossman is the author of articles and books about corporations, the economy, labor, environment and legal history. He is also co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) (1994); co-founder of Stop the Poisoning Schools (1986) and Democracy Schools (2003). He lives in New York's Catskill Mountains and is reachable at rgrossman@riseup.net.
------------
http://www.truthout.org/031809B
Beware the Madoff Diversion!
Wednesday 18 March 2009
by: Richard Grossman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sure, there are crooks out there. But the overwhelming majority of actions by corporate directors and managers that have created today's messes have been legal.
Not only legal, but also widely regarded as necessary and essential to sustain the American Way of Life. To put food on our tables. To heat our homes. To provide jobs. To defend liberty and freedom ...
Simply put: Giant business and financial corporations govern. The few who run them make the governing decisions that dictate people's work, living conditions, health and the nature of our communities.
Business and financial corporations are not simply "market players." Although, in legal terms, corporations are mere "fictions of the law," they function as political forces. They concentrate wealth and power so their directors and managers can impose their values upon communities, the nation, the earth.
Corporate directors and managers have long defined how people live, what people do. Sometimes, they take their paychecks from their corporations, sometimes, from our governments. For generations, they've been writing our laws, propagandizing our children, dictating policy, plundering the planet. To gain such power, they long ago got Congress, federal judges and state legislatures to wrap their corporate bodies in the Constitution of the United States. To bestow upon their corporate "fictions" the authority to govern.
Armed with "freedom of speech," "due process," "equal protection of the law," the "commerce clause," "the contracts clause," and other constitutional powers, corporate directors and managers have been wielding the law to deny people's most fundamental human rights.
Corporate directors and managers have been making "private" decisions, which in an authentic democracy must be made by people in community via democratic processes.
Their real bottom line is not that their corporations are "just too big to fail." It's that without giant corporations, we helpless human earthlings could do nothing to meet our needs. That we would languish freezing, starving, unemployed, unentertained, vulnerable, in the dark.
After the great savings and loan thefts, after the great WorldCom and Enron Corporation thefts - after every financial cataclysm of the past century - people have been assured that the problem was "greed and excess."
There were always pundits and politicians galore to declare "greed and excess," just as there were always Madoffs galore to personify such evils. So, as night followed day, legislatures passed laws to regulate "greed and excess." And then they told us to go home and relax ... everything would be O.K.
Sure, Madoff and his ilk are major crooks. They've caused great harm to many people. There are laws aplenty to deal with such obvious crooks - so they'll end up in jail and good riddance.
But after the Madoffs of every generation are all locked up, most of the corporate directors and managers who "legally" plunged the nation into these messes continue governing over the nation. They keep instructing people that the source of the nation's problems is "greed and excesses," and "crooks." They keep spending the people's money to set things right. And they keep writing We the People's laws.
Isn't that what's happening today?
Corporate directors and managers count on our being desperate to return to the way things were, on our not changing who's calling the shots or the laws of the land, which have long enabled a corporate class to rule.
So, let's not let ourselves be distracted by a few high-profile crooks on perp walks. Let's beware "greed and excess." Instead, we can scrutinize constitutional law and statute law and judge made law that have long empowered a relative handful of corporate directors and managers to deny We the People's most fundamental rights ... to prevent us from governing ourselves.
To stop corporate cataclysms from crashing down upon us and the earth over and over and over again, and to drive human-friendly, planet-loving values into law and policy, We the People can rewrite basic constitutional doctrines regarding corporate "fictions," flesh and blood human beings and earth rights.
To do this, we'll have to assume the authority to govern ourselves.
Isn't that a revolutionary idea?
---------
Grossman is the author of articles and books about corporations, the economy, labor, environment and legal history. He is also co-founder of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) (1994); co-founder of Stop the Poisoning Schools (1986) and Democracy Schools (2003). He lives in New York's Catskill Mountains and is reachable at rgrossman@riseup.net.
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