| Swim out past the breakers, and watch the world die. (part 12 or so . . .) |
[Mar. 27th, 2009|08:26 pm] |
Not that this is the sort of cheerfulness anyone probably *wants* to be reading on a Friday night, but alas, at this point I'm pretty sure an uninformed populace = a doomed populace, I'd rather *not* just watch the world die and do nothing, and now is when I have time/energy to post this . . . (whether this is doing anything adequate is a whole different issue, but 'tis most I can do at this point; hopefully unforeseen and exponential ripple effects and all, ya know?)
See Glenn Greenwald here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/26/comparisions/index.html
w/quotes such as these:
Desmond Lachman -- the former chief strategist for emerging markets at Salomon Smith Barney and a long-time official with the IMF (no raving socialist he) -- argues today that the most apt comparison for the U.S. now is not Japan's "lost decade," but rather, "that the United States is coming to resemble Argentina, Russia and other so-called emerging markets, both in what led us to the crisis, and in how we're trying to fix it." He begins by recounting an IMF trip to Yeltsin-era Russia:
"I still recall the shock I felt at a meeting in Russia's dingy Ministry of Finance, where I finally realized how a handful of young oligarchs were bringing Russia's economy to ruin in the pursuit of their own selfish interests"
&
Yves Smith last night noted the rather extraordinary (though unsurprising) development that the very institutions that played such a critical role in the crisis -- Citibank and Bank of America -- are now using TARP funds they received not to extend more loans (the ostensible purpose of the bailout), but rather, to buy up more and more of the very distressed assets that Geithner insists they need to be relieved of, because they now know that, under Geithner's plan, they will be able to sell them at a substantial profit courtesy of public funds (i.e, the Government will buy those crippled assets at well above their current market price). As Smith puts it: "So not only are they seeking to extract far more than was intended even with the already generous subsidies embodied in this program, but this activity is also speculating with taxpayer money. . . .Welcome to yet more looting."
Despite the limitless gorging on public funds by the very oligarchs (government owners) who caused the financial crisis in the first place, the predominant sentiment from our establishment media now is that Obama needs to force ordinary Americans to "sacrifice more." Back in 2006, Jonathan Schwarz wrote this very prescient post predicting that the U.S. would soon adopt the type of so-called "structural adjustments" which, through the IMF, we repeatedly forced upon other heavily indebted, defaulting nations: whereby we would demand that they pursue solutions that further enriched their economic elites while massively cutting the social spending that provided the barest of safety nets to their ordinary citizens. As Schwarz put it yesterday in citing highly revealing comments by Tim Geithner at a CFR conference this week:
There's been a common phenomenon in the third world over the past three decades or so. A country's financial sector, in collaboration with the larger financial world, would create some type of gigantic economic fuck up. The IMF would then (in collaboration with the local financial elites) step in and provide loans in return for what was called "structural adjustment." Structural adjustment involved getting rid of any kind of social spending that made life bearable for everyone else.
In other words, the country's financial elites would use the catastrophes they'd created themselves in order to do what they'd always wanted to but couldn't get away with in normal times. They took the profit, and then imposed all the costs on everyone else.
Isn't that exactly what is now happening here?
(which one could illustrate with this from http://www.correntewire.com/remember_air_traffic_controllers_one_those_ideas_i_suppose :
" . . . but impose a strict deadline for bondholders and union workers to make concessions that would help the ailing automakers become viable businesses and avert bankruptcy. . . . " The contrast between what the unions are getting -- a kick in the ribs while they're down -- and what the banksters are getting couldn't be greater. From the same meeting VL linked to at cnbc:
When asked how long JP Morgan will keep the TARP money it received, Dimon said: "We have no immediate timetable as to when that money will be returned." He also said JP Morgan had no need to raise further equity right now.
Funny, somehow I think that if union guys and homeowners tell the banksters that they "have no immediate timetable" for making their mortgage payments, the reaction wouldn't be quite as cordial as it was in Obama's White House. )
Greenwald goes on to quote someone or another (there's a link there, to tease you as to find out who) with this little factoid:
the American prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history.
Here, as in other areas of social policy, the United States is a stark international outlier, sitting at the most rightward end of the political spectrum: We imprison at a far higher rate than the other industrial democracies — higher, indeed, than either Russia or China, and vastly higher than any of the countries of Western Europe. . . . With approximately one twentieth of the world’s population, America had nearly one fourth of the world’s inmates.
Yes, that's right -- while we might jail for different reasons a lot of the times, the US is now arguably more of a police state than Russia or Communist China. Yet, people who are essentially destroying the future of the country (and environmentally, the world, I'd say) as well as the Bush administration officials who did more than anyone to fuck things up, are they going anywhere near a jail? No.
As Greenwald concludes . . .
So our political class cheers on treasury-draining wars, allows financial elites to rob and pillage, witnesses huge transfers of wealth to the richest, and then when the whole thing explodes, the "real fiscal answer" is for ordinary Americans to have their Medicare benefits "slashed" and Social Security benefits reduced.
More fun links at corrente:
http://www.correntewire.com/holy_fuck_un_resolution_condemns_blasphemy
A United Nations forum on Thursday passed a resolution condemning "defamation of religion" as a human rights violation, despite wide concerns that it could be used to justify curbs on free speech in Muslim countries.
The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the non-binding text, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic states, with a vote of 23 states in favour and 11 against, with 13 abstentions.
& the following w/out quotes 'cause this is getting long and I'm tired and I wanna go to bed:
http://www.correntewire.com/bank_america_use_bailout_money_increase_banksters_salaries_70
http://www.correntewire.com/obama_you_go_and_you_just_say_im_sick_and_somebody_treats_you_and_thats_it
http://www.correntewire.com/how_does_your_garden_grow_pt_1
http://www.correntewire.com/obama_sides_bush_banksters_against_consumers_states_regulating_discrimination_lending
http://www.correntewire.com/oligarchy_or_kleptocracy_you_decide_1
http://www.correntewire.com/oligarchy_or_kleptocracy_you_decide_2
http://www.correntewire.com/oligarchy_or_kleptocracy_you_decide_3
I was gonna post more, including some hopeful stuff, but the whole weak n weary thing. Lest anyone think I am suggesting w/the various "Obama needs to change what he's doing *now*!" that things couldn't be worse, I should point out that they could be. Dunno where the link is right now, but in 7 or so states Republicans are proposing drug testing for such things as *food stamps*, and in one state, I think twas Florida, *unemployment benefits*, which is especially outrageous given that the people getting those benefits actually paid into them out of their salaries. |
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