Lootin’ and lyin’
Michael Hudson is back, and telling us — as usual — that the emperor has no clothes. Not with Orlov yet in his recognition of the industrial fallacy of what Mark Jones called “radical technological optimism,” but he can spot the spin on finance from a mile away. For the record, and without any hesitation, we can aim these analyses at the Obama “rescue package” — a bureacratic-technocratic clusterfuck of compromises, half-measures, and outright capitulations that would make Woodrow Wilson blush — and predict with absolute assurance that the plan will be the most expensive policy failure in history. They can blame it on Bush (a lie in itself — neoliberalism as embodied by the undead Clinton administration turned the last signficant corner down this path), and when that wears thin, they’ll have Afghanstan to blame (since that will be a bigger foreign policy failure than Iraq — which at least limited its destabilizations and mass death to non-nulcear states). The empire strikes out. The sooner we dispense with our denial, and abandon hope that there is a state solution to this stormy new epoch, the better.
How is it that Alan Greenspan, free-market lobbyist for Wall Street, recently announced that he favored nationalization of America’s banks – and indeed, mainly the biggest and most powerful? Has the old disciple of Ayn Rand gone Red in the night? Surely not.
The answer is that the rhetoric of “free markets,” “nationalization” and even “socialism” (as in “socializing the losses”) has been turned into the language of deception to help the financial sector mobilize government power to support its own special privileges. Having undermined the economy at large, Wall Street’s public relations think tanks are now dismantling the language itself….
Kim Sky:
State solution — to “abandon hope that there is a state solution” . . .
It appears to me as if a state solution along the lines of what happened in Chile, Hudson mentions Operation Condor as an example, “… The resulting privatization at gunpoint became an exercise in what Marx called “primitive accumulation” – seizure of the public domain by political elites backed by force.”
24 February 2009, 1:24 pmskol:
A couple of other recent Hudson articles:
24 February 2009, 2:12 pmFinance Capitalism Hits a Wall. The Oligarchs’ Escape Plan – at the Treasury’s Expense (Global Research, Feb 17)
Bubble Economy 2.0: The Financial Recovery Plan from Hell (Global Research, Feb 11)
Obama’s new bank giveaway (Counterpunch, Feb 1)
Susan/catlady:
Paul Craig Roberts has a good headliner at Counterpunch as well: How the Economy Was Lost (Doomed By Myths of Free Trade).
Is it time to start banging our pots and pans in the street yet?
24 February 2009, 6:18 pmSam:
Re:Is it time to start banging our pots and pans in the street yet?
Oh yes! Let’s turn off the TV and get off the couch and go bang some pots!
27 February 2009, 2:24 pmMarilyn Farhat:
The bailout of the last days of the Bush era were given without conditions. Let us wait and see the outcome of the current Obama plan with its supposed restrictions and caps on CEO income, entitlements and bonuses, among other domestic ideas to help those who lost their homes. It is my understanding that our county of San Luis Obispo, CA (fairly small) will be receiving over $800,000 for our local homeless program (it would have been nice had the money been used to build affordable housing for those homeless and the largely full-time workers who have to live in an artificially inflated housing market).
The reality is that Obama is a product of the system that gave rise to Bush and ALL of his predecessors. It is a system that was set up by the political and religious movers on the Continent, a leadership that built its wealth with the blood, sweat and tears of the native population as well as the hijacked slave laborers.
The way I see it, we are the indentured servants of those in power who view the rest of us with contempt and use us as their errand boys and girls when unleashing havoc across the globe or as their obedient sheep when needing our vote and money to buy stuff. They keep us pacified with little crumbs of quick fixes and drugs. Let’s face it, we are never told the truth. No government in history tells its people the truth if it can get away with it. Bush and his Neo-Con/Neo-Liberal bands tried to implement the Milton Friedman brand of Capitalism in the United States. They were not completely successful, but they did manage to send us and the rest of the world into a depression. We are a bit lucky, in my opinion, in the fact that they were (until now at least) unable to privatize social security, or the school system, or the public service sector. They have not been able to do away with Medicare. Had they been successful, we would have seen a travesty of unrivaled proportions. Many people I know who are close to retirement have seen their 401Ks dwindle to worthless numbers and are having to extend their work time, and these are people in their 60s.
However, the Milton Friedman boys were able to spread their tentacles into other areas of the world more successfully, including more recently the Middle East and Southeast Asia after the Tsunami, and New Orleans, of course. They are forcing governments to privatize their public service sectors under the guise of “eradicating corruption” and as a condition for receiving money from the IMF to rebuild cities, towns and infrastructures destroyed by our proxy wars in the region, especially by our big and holy errand boy over there, Israel.
The war on the idea of a public sector has been pushed hard into the minds of many Americans. The abhorred “socialist” label that is being used nonchalantly by everyone is a scare tactic. I think socialism and capitalism, no matter how we define or describe them, are only as good as 2 things: our moral commitment to our fellow human beings no matter who they are and our willingness and ability to do what is right for everyone. Short of that, all those philosophical and historical debates mean NOTHING. In other words: JUSTICE FOR ALL or nothing.
There is a lot of Obama infatuation as well as Obama vilification going on. I think neither is a good way to look at it. Ultimately, Obama and his minions are a reflection on who we are. I am a firm believer in grassroots activism in all aspects of morality and justice and the rights of all people. If we, as individuals and voters and citizens are not informed or convinced that others deserve the same basic human rights, and if we do not actively act on those beliefs, our leaders will not change and we have forfeited the right to be indignant.
Historically speaking, the real movers and shakers are those who can influence people by example, not by force.
We may see a real paradigm shift and true change for the better, whether during this administration or after when:
- We continue to advocate for the dismantling of the global military system (those who also study history will know that the original purpose of armies in historical times was to keep order within the realm, not outside of it, as well as collect taxes).
- We forfeit the world-view taught by organized religion that outwardly or tacitly supports oppression and murder while preaching their lovey-dovey messages (do you ever wonder where the money you donate to synagogues, mosques, and churches really goes?). Theirs is a world view that demands OBEDIENCE, therefore rewarding the obedient and punishing the prodigal ones.
- We work towards building better and more just and sustainable local, national, and international communities. That implies that as long as there is one homeless American or one American without access to affordable health care, we are still doing business as usual.
- We are willing to share with others less fortunate, not because they “deserve” it, but because it is their right by the mere fact of them being human beings, regardless of their views, actions, and beliefs.
I was struck by the naivete of some regarding the Hwaida ‘Arraf story. I wanted to say out loud that Huwaida is NOT the exception in other parts of the world. She IS the norm. That is the crux of my argument. The fact that someone thinks or we are told that she is the exception does not make her so. People have no clue how men and women live in other parts of the world, no clue of the daily efforts to make a living while living in war (the biggest oppressor of the feminine) and trying to maintain an attitude of conciliation despite the slaughter and economic hardship. I speak from first-hand experience. That is the world you will not see through the lens of the media or the spin of the Neo-Cons here. It is the extension of the same world that gave rise to colonialism. It is the same world that is pushing for expansion in the Middle East. It is the same world that finances the slaughter of the poor people of Ghaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and many, many other places using our lack of action and money in the name of prosperity, religion, individualism, and moral superiority (therefore right). It is the same world that is destroying our planet in the most of unholy ways and is using it as a den of slaughter, debauchery, and pillage. I think all the above are interlinked more closely than we may dare ourselves think in our our most enlightened moments of reflection, and I think it is the morality that generates that kind of behavior that is causing the economic fiasco in the world (and the US).
We are one world whether we like it or not. Define globalism, or any other “ism” the way you like. We are all in it together and we had better get hopping.
ARE WE OUR BROTHERS’ AND SISTERS’ KEEPERS? Or are we the keepers of the morally depraved systems of mind and soul control with a different garb every generation?
Have we done anything beneficial to anyone on a daily basis? Have we spoken out or actively done anything to stop the murder of one person on the planet? I think we should all keep stock of our own commitment to justice and speak out on its behalf to our occasional discomfort, for then, we may be pleasantly surprised.
28 February 2009, 8:25 pmCharles:
Good to see in his immediately previous article Hudson is using Lenin’s category of Finance Capitalism
CB
http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson02172009.html
Finance Capitalism Hits a Wall
The Oligarchs’ Escape Plan
By MICHAEL HUDSON
The financial “wealth creation” game is over. Economies emerged from World War II relatively free of debt, but the 60-year global run-up has run its course. Finance capitalism is in a state of collapse, and marginal palliatives cannot revive it. The U.S. economy cannot “inflate its way out of debt,” because this would collapse the dollar and end its dreams of global empire by forcing foreign countries to go their own way. There is too little manufacturing to make the economy more “competitive,” given its high housing costs, transportation, debt and tax overhead. A quarter to a third of U.S. real estate has fallen into negative equity, so no banks will lend to them. The economy has hit a debt wall and is falling into negative equity, where it may remain for as far as the eye can see until there is a debt write-down.
STAN: Hudson’s description of finance capitalism is different from Lenin and Hilferding, because it represents a new instantiation of it: debt-leverage imperialism.
4 March 2009, 9:12 pmTomThumb:
Chomsky has written that the government of the US can best be described as an ongoing criminal enterprise. What the bailouts have shown is that the government is actually the enforcement and managerial arm of a bigger criminal enterprise controlled by the financial elites. The main purpose of this enterprise is to extract wealth from the lower classes of the population both in the US and abroad. As an example of both these, witness the exportation of jobs from the US, which lowers labor costs there, to China, where extremely low wages can be exploited. Note that while there may be a decrease in prices of the goods coming from China, it no way compares to the price decrease of the labor rates. Peter Mandelson noted that a Chinese manufacturing firm receives only $4 for an i-pod that retails for $290 in the US.
Similarly, the bailouts are an attempt to shift the losses of the financial industries onto the population at large. The reason given is that these institutions are too big to fail. That may be the case, but the correct action would be what is called an intervention (note that this is not nationalization or socialization). It happens all the time with smaller banks that are deemed insolvent. The FDIC takes over the bank, declares shareholder equity nil, sells off the viable assets, puts the bank back out on the market as a going concern, and pays off some fraction of any debt. The bailout consists of pumping money into an essentially failed company, usually run by the same people who got there in the first place, and trusting that the toxic debt on the books or further mismanagement won’t require further government funds. The reason the large banks recieve such preferred treatment, that essentially protects stockholders who have made a bad investment, is not that they run the government, but that they are part of a larger oligarchy that does run the government. By the way, I have heard this not only from those on the left, but recently from some on right wing talk radio, so it becoming a somewhat general assumption, especially since both Obama’s solution differs little from Bush’s.
An analysis of Afghanistan and Iraq can proceed from the same overlying assumption that the US government is part of an ongoing criminal enterprise. However, these instances involve the enforcement arm of the enterprise. Both involved government taking advantage of popular reaction to the events of 9/11, the circumstance around which have never been adequately explained. However, not one Afghani or Iraqi was involved in 9/11 and the actual planning was done in Europe. Indeed, thought 15 of the supposed 19 hijackers were Saudi, no significant pressure, diplomatically or militarily, was put on Saudi Arabia. So much for digging up old, but archaeologically significant, bones. The popular myth has been formed.
As Andrew Bacevich has observed, the correct reaction to 9/11 should have been a criminal investigation and prosecution, not knee jerk military reaction. If military reaction was required, Afghanistan should have been the focus, but Rumsfeld himself tried to bypass Afghanistan and go directly into Iraq, but that proved to be, politically, ‘one bridge too far’ or rather ‘one bridge too soon.’
Obama has stated that Afghanistan should have been the main objective, not Iraq. However, he misses the point that, from the beginning, Afghnistan was inextricably tied to Iraq, and not due to any similarity of the countries or populations, but due to the desires of the Bush administration. As Michael Ruppert has documented, US intervention was originally planned for Afghanistan some time before 9/11 in order to control pipeline right of way for oil from the former Soviet central Asian states. By 9/11, however, this oil proved to be of much smaller quantity than originally expected and in a greater number of, but smaller, resevoirs making it harder to extrract. Hence, the invasion of Iraq, but politically, Afghanistan had to come before Iraq.
Now, the US has been in Afghanistan for over seven years. A place that was originally thought pacified, but has experienced an insurgency growing in numbers and lethality over the past several years. A place that has historically proved detrimental to the ambitions of a number of empires. A country with twice the area and population of Iraq with terrain much better suited to asymmetric warefare. Before the invasion of Iraq, General Shinseki prophically estimated it would take between 200,000 and 300,000 troops to successfully occupy Iraq. One prominent retired general recently stated it would take 500,000 troops to successfully occupy Afghanistan. Not a good prospect.
Now, why can’t the US not just simply leave Afghanistan. Think of a Mafia don. Can he let some bookie operate in his territory without paying dues. Think of your local crack lord. Can he let some punk come sell crack in his territory. Yes, the amount of money may be relatively small to him, but he has a reputation to think about, and it sets a bad example for other would be interlopers. What is the Empire’s territory, why, the whole world, and similarly, the empire cannot be seen to have been beaten. Hence, the seemingly mindless pursuit of victories in small wars that have far outlived any original rationale for being.
Having run on a platform of leaving Iraq, the agreement for which George Bush conveniently negotiated before he came to power, the new don must ‘make his bones’ in Afghanistan.
12 March 2009, 1:58 amMichael Anderson:
Mo’ lyin’:
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/09/major-banks-said-to-cover-debt-levels/?dlbk&emc=dlbk
Anyone believe in a recovery now?
9 April 2010, 8:41 amMichael Anderson:
Good short summary of fractional reserve banking—-old news for some, but good nonetheless, and fully consistent with localization:
http://www.newswithviews.com/Barnewall/marilyn181.htm
THE WAY BANKING USED TO BE
“…Regulations were strict and they were enforced… those last three words are key to understanding one of the major reasons for our current financial mess. Today, regulations are not enforced. That is especially true during times the government wants to implement new regulatory controls. They ignore the regulations that are on the books and when things fall apart they demand new regulations be created. Why do they do this? In my opinion, they use this ruse when they need to cover something up… need to pass new regulations that will prevent the public from finding an error or an unlawful action taken – I believe that the Dodd Frank Bill was passed to cover up unlawful foreclosures and all of the actions taken that made foreclosures possible in the first place. Or, like the time the Federal Reserve gave its permission for investment banks to join with commercial banks on Wall Street when the Fed had absolutely no authority over the investment banking community and legally could not take such an action. When they passed legislation to allow the Fed to do what it had done six months earlier, they grandfathered the law to the date of the occurrence.
In other words, when you hear “new regulatory controls,” it should send a shiver up your spine, not provide you with a sense of security or that someone who knows what he or she is doing is in control. If someone who knew what he or she was doing was in control, there would be no need for new regulatory controls…”
5 July 2012, 12:04 pm