Martina Portnaya of Russia Today interviews Gerald Celente of the Trends Research Institute. Celente describes the current trends of the United States government i.e. incremental fascism, as well as the current trends of the American people in a time of economic crisis.
I remember having had discussions with lots of folks about the plight of the American Indians at the time of the release of the Academy Award winning film, Dances with Wolves, back in 1990. The film ignited a new round of reflection regarding the systematic atrocities perpetrated by whites and their governments in both American hemispheres, as they proceeded to destroy entire civilizations of indigenous humans from the landscape of the Americas.
People would often wax, “Imagine what it must have been like to wake up and find that everything you had grown up knowing was undergoing inexorable change from forces beyond your immediate ability to control.” That is how I felt after I read the feature article in the current issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, The Big Takeover, written by Matt Taibbi.
The article reviews the recent history of how this country and the world came to the precipice of the current economic meltdown facing us all. The author, Matt Taibbi, chronicles step by step the key events beginning in 1998 that caused the present financial calamity. It was as though I was reading an account written by an author who is a cross between George Orwell and Lewis Carrol.
Highlights include an explanation of the range of the new acronyms that have sprung up in our banking/securities litany;
An ongoing dynamic in the financial arena is the constant change of their vernacular that creates a language of its own. A language that is too esoteric for common English speaking folk. The author points out that slaves were not permitted to learn to read. Allowing such skills meant that they could become literate and consequentially more informed and powerful, concepts antithetical to subjugation.
As you read accounts of the machinations of this elite cadre of players, you develop a keener insight into their unworldly mind set. Nothing has brought that notion more to light than the bonus controversy that has erupted, in Richter Scale dimensions, upon the American public learning of the bonus structure of AIG and those targeted to receive bonuses of over $1 million minimum per person. Increments of hundreds of millions and billions of dollars are near impossible for the average citizen to grasp, but one million is a number they can relate to, if for no other reason than the popular TV shows touting million dollar payouts to winners. Deal or no deal, it is plain to see that AIG got a sweet deal.
The outrage is justifiably exacerbated by the fact that the recipients are the very individuals that brought AIG to its knees while their compensation has come from the U.S. taxpayers themselves; easily an example of “insult to injury.” This supposed “Bailout” is nothing more than rich bankers bailing out rich bankers with the taxpayers credit card, according to the author.
The “coup de gras” of the article is the revelation of the seemingly unbridled power of the Federal Reserve. According to Taibbi, the Federal Reserve has already loaned out $3.7 trillion and extended credit for investment guarantees amounting to $5.7 trillion! As of this writing, AIG’s total indebtedness is still not known.
When inquiries were made to the FED from Congressman Alan Grayson (FL), about where the money is going, to whom, and in what amounts, he was stonewalled. The Fed cited an act passed in 1950, “The Accounting Auditing Act”, which states the Fed cannot be audited by Congress or anyone else. In conjunction with the FEDERAL RESERVE, the Department of Treasury has yet to reveal exactly where all the TARP funds have gone, nor have they released any scorecards on the health of the nation’s banks. A widely held view is that people in Hank Paulson’s rolodex were the first to receive payments, but smaller, regional banks have sat on the sidelines, waiting for their phone calls and applications to be responded to that were submitted last fall.
I, for one, am concerned that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and President Obama’s Chief Financial Advisor, Larry Summers, are being compromised by their prior associations with these financial renegades that seemingly have brought the world to the doorsteps of total economic collapse.
In Bob Dylan’s first major album hit, “Free Wheelin”, he wrote about the murders that took place on the campus of the University of Mississippi in 1962, during the admission of the school’s first black student, James Meredith, in a song titled “Oxford Town.” His last line in the song is, “Somebody better investigate soon.”
Source: RollingStone “The Big Takeover” by Matt Taibi, published March 19th, 2009
On the heels of the news that the loophole allowing fat AIG bonuses was deliberately written into the stimulus bill, with full support of the U.S. Department of Treasury, comes the revelation that at least 13 of the corporations receiving stimulus money courtesy of U.S. taxpayers owe back taxes—that is, they had not paid their fair share towards the public good that they are now benefiting from, not to say (more forthrightly) cynically exploiting.
Yes, I am back on my habitual rant against mammoth financial institutions and corporate capitalism, which, no, I neither trust nor believe are indispensable, despite a lifetime of hype over better tomorrows, what’s good for the country, invisible hands, and the privilege of “choice” and individual ownership of property.
And, again no, I tend not to blame the (yes, culpable) federal government for corrupting global capitalism, rather the reverse: for most of the nation’s history, big business and a wealthy elite have used the federal government to their own interests, not the common good.
“A banker,” said Mark Twain, “is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it starts to rain.” I would say “lease” instead of “lend.” And “wants it back” with interest … and a user fee.
No expert in economics and possibly downright un-American in my distrust of profiteering, I probably have no right whatsoever to complain. OK, OK, I am part of the problem. There, I said it.
And, sure, the pure, spiritualized version of capitalism is indeed lovely, I admit it, where smiling faces exchange much needed goods and services, sprouting from perpetually fruitful cornucopia, based on individual needs—one bright face valuing more what the other bright face values a bit less, permitting a “profit” for both parties. My eyes well up with happy tears.
And it is no less (or more) a fantasy than the pure, spiritualized version of socialism—I concede that, too. Nothing is gained through idealizing or demonizing people or institutions, when the reality is fairly easy to see.
And while I am qualifying a claim that strikes me as just common sense (though it’s hardly common at all), let me also state that I think corporations and capitalism have done much good for the world and its citizens, too … though perhaps more as side effects than as their central mission.
But I would add that the most astounding of those contributions—such as computer, satellite, nuclear, and microwave technologies—have sprung from military (thus government) funding and state university research, which smart capitalists have acquired and effectively marketed back to the citizens whose tax money funded the studies and discoveries in the first place.
Having said all that, here’s my point …
… that capitalism puts power, sometimes immense power, into private hands, creating and perpetuating unnecessary inequalities in a democratic republic, such as ours,
… that power tends naturally to protect its own interests, so once centralized in family dynasties or even modern virtual individuals such as corporations, power and wealth seldom leak out (or trickle down) to the general citizenry and, even then, mainly as means of galvanizing more power to those who already hold the larger portion of it,
… that the powerful tend to exploit the unpowerful, but …
… that the exploitation is almost always couched in terms of altruism and cooperation—so that those without power regard those with power as benefactors, protectors, and, most perniciously, indispensable realities, not acknowledging …
… that wealth and power alike are symbolic—that gold would have no value if, as in Thomas More’s fantasy Utopia, people simply would stop seeing any value in it, and that great armies would have no force if underpaid, underappreciated soldiers, always asked to risk more than they have to gain, would refuse to fight for vague, inconsistent, and ultimately false value claims, masking the interests of the already powerful to retain and enhance that power.
All of this is general and abstract, but the reality is ever present with us. The physical evidence to support this claim is part of the air we breathe daily. And while I am distrustful of revolution and promises of a perfect society, I do think real change still occurs and remains strongly probable for the future—despite there being so much cynical illusion of improvement, as new bosses replace old bosses. Real change occurs primarily through individuals’ practicing moral consciousness, consideration of the common good, as part of their own self-interest, and cooperation in taking the baby steps needed to make their world a better place for everybody in it.
And I say “their world” on purpose, not in the sense of ownership, but in the sense of responsibility and duty. We are not entirely dependent on the flagrant inequalities that we have come to accept as just the nature of things.
No doubt we do have a strong stake in some of the very institutions that sometimes oppress us (including not only AIG and the corporate structure, in general, but also an often arrogant and self-absorbed federal government), and we should not fool ourselves into thinking that the collapse of giants—even detestable, oppressive giants—does not pose considerable dangers for us little people, too.
But such giants have collapsed before, and the world kept turning.
Apparently, the American taxpayers didn’t have their faces rubbed in the sleazy spending sprees of AIG enough the first time around. After the first installment of 85 billion in bailout funds was promised to this too-corrupt-to-fail corporate giant, we saw them spend upwards of 400,000 dollars on a luxury retreat while the top executives basked in the works of facials and golf.
Lawmakers were so streamed that they allowed for another installment of taxpayer dollars, as an additional 150 billion dollar ‘package’ was implemented as part of the save AIG scheme. Now, caught again are the movers and shakers of AIG hard at work retreating and dining at another spa junket.
The power and control over our Nation’s money supply combined with the smug insistence by our lawmakers and administration that we trust them to handle the financial mess they have created is a slap in the face to all of us. Oh, how I wish change was truly coming to Washington.
