COULDN’T THIS ARTICLE BE
CALLED THE FALL of AMERICA AND RISE OF LA RAZA FASCISM IN AMERICAN RULED BY
WALL STREET?
CITIGROUP IS ONE OF OBAMA'S BIGGEST DONORS. THEY'VE DONE WELL WITH THEIR INVESTMENT! PROFITS FOR OBAMA'S CRIMINAL BANKSTERS HAVE SOARED. DURING OBAMA'S FIRST TWO YEARS IN OFFICE, THE BANKSTERS RAKED IN MORE THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH!
WHILE OBAMA'S DOJ IS HARASSING LEGALS TO STOPE E-VERIFY, EASE ILLEGALS INTO VOTING BOOTHS WITH NO ID, AND SUING AMERICAN STATES ON BEHALF OF OBAMA'S LA RAZA SUPREMACY AGENDA, NOT EVEN ONE BANKSTER HAS GONE TO PRISON!
"They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?
Take, for example, Citigroup. For decades, Citigroup has been one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations, repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer, starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through the corruption, but it’s pretty astonishing."
“Records
show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial
industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase
($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”
*
The Occupy movement has been an extremely
exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like
it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be
sustained through a long, dark period ahead -- because victory won’t come
quickly -- it could prove a significant moment in American history.
The fact that the Occupy
movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it’s an
unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning
point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been
a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways. That’s another story,
but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development, and
hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this.
That was true even in very dark times.
I’m just old enough to remember the Great
Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s -- although the
situation was objectively much harsher than it is today -- nevertheless, the
spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,”
even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it
will get better.”
There was militant labor union organizing
going on, especially from the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). It
was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are frightening to the
business world -- you could see it in the business press at the time -- because
a sit-down strike is just a step before taking over the factory and running it
yourself. The idea of worker takeovers is something which is, incidentally,
very much on the agenda today, and we should keep it in mind. Also New Deal
legislation was beginning to come in as a result of popular pressure. Despite
the hard times, there was a sense that, somehow, “we’re gonna get out of it.”
It’s quite different now.
For many people in the United States, there’s a pervasive sense of
hopelessness, sometimes despair. I think it’s quite new in American history.
And it has an objective basis.
On the Working Class
In the 1930s, unemployed working people
could anticipate that their jobs would come back. If you’re a worker in
manufacturing today -- the current level of unemployment there is approximately
like the Depression -- and current tendencies persist, those jobs aren’t going
to come back.
The change took place in the 1970s. There
are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying factors, discussed mainly by
economic historian Robert Brenner, was the falling rate of profit in
manufacturing. There were other factors. It led to major changes in the economy
-- a reversal of several hundred years of progress towards industrialization
and development that turned into a process of de-industrialization and
de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued overseas very
profitably, but it’s no good for the work force.
Along with that came a significant shift of
the economy from productive enterprise -- producing things people need or could
use -- to financial manipulation. The financialization of the economy really
took off at that time.
On Banks
Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They
did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took
unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some
potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to
college. That changed dramatically in the 1970s. Until then, there had been no
financial crises since the Great Depression. The 1950s and 1960s had been a
period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic
history.
And it was egalitarian. The lowest quintile
did about as well as the highest quintile. Lots of people moved into reasonable
lifestyles -- what’s called the “middle class” here, the “working class” in
other countries -- but it was real. And the 1960s accelerated it. The activism
of those years, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in
lots of ways that are permanent.
When the 1970s came along, there were
sudden and sharp changes: de-industrialization, the off-shoring of production,
and the shift to financial institutions, which grew enormously. I should say
that, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was also the development of what several
decades later became the high-tech economy: computers, the Internet, the IT
Revolution developed substantially in the state sector.
The developments that took place during the
1970s set off a vicious cycle. It led to the concentration of wealth
increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. This doesn’t benefit the
economy -- it probably harms it and society -- but it did lead to a tremendous
concentration of wealth.
On Politics and Money
Concentration of wealth yields
concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives
rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The legislation,
essentially bipartisan, drives new fiscal policies and tax changes, as well as
the rules of corporate governance and deregulation. Alongside this began a
sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drove the political parties even
deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector.
The parties dissolved in many ways. It used
to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee
chair, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple
of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to
get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole
system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector (increasingly the
financial sector).
This cycle resulted in a tremendous
concentration of wealth, mainly in the top tenth of one percent of the
population. Meanwhile, it opened a period of stagnation or even decline for the
majority of the population. People got by, but by artificial means such as
longer working hours, high rates of borrowing and debt, and reliance on asset
inflation like the recent housing bubble. Pretty soon those working hours were
much higher in the United States than in other industrial countries like Japan
and various places in Europe. So there was a period of stagnation and decline
for the majority alongside a period of sharp concentration of wealth. The
political system began to dissolve.
The outcome of the deficit commission is
probably going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could provide a mass
base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger pointed at the heart of the
country.
Plutonomy and the Precariat
For the general population, the 99% in the
imagery of the Occupy movement, it’s been pretty harsh -- and it could get
worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less
-- the .1% -- it’s just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than
ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can
continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?
Take, for example, Citigroup. For decades,
Citigroup has been one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking
corporations, repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer, starting in the early
Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through the corruption, but it’s
pretty astonishing.
In 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure
for investors called “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances.”
It urged investors to put money into a “plutonomy index.” The brochure says,
“The World is dividing into two blocs -- the Plutonomy and the rest.”
Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy
luxury goods and so on, and that’s where the action is. They claimed that their
plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set
them adrift. We don’t really care about them. We don’t really need them. They
have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us
out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no
function. These days they’re sometimes called the “precariat” -- people who
live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it’s not the
periphery anymore. It’s becoming a very substantial part of society in the
United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.
So, for example, Fed Chairman Alan
Greenspan, at the time when he was still “Saint Alan” -- hailed by the
economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this was
before the crash for which he was substantially responsible) -- was testifying
to Congress in the Clinton years, and he explained the wonders of the great
economy that he was supervising. He said a lot of its success was based
substantially on what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If working people
are insecure, if they’re part of the precariat, living precarious existences,
they’re not going to make demands, they’re not going to try to get better
wages, they won’t get improved benefits. We can kick ’em out, if we don’t need
’em. And that’s what’s called a “healthy” economy, technically speaking. And he
was highly praised for this, greatly admired.
So the world is now indeed splitting into a
plutonomy and a precariat -- in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1% and
the 99%. Not literal numbers, but the right picture. Now, the plutonomy is
where the action is and it could continue like this.
If it does, the historic reversal that
began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. And
the Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert
this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard
struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures
that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major
victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done.
Toward Worker Takeover
I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one
of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is
simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.
Through the 1970s, as the decline was
setting in, there were some important events that took place. In 1977, U.S.
Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead
of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together
and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a
worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular
support, they could have won. It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton
Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.
It was a partial victory because, even
though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in
other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes
not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed.
And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.
In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a
year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a
profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing.
Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the
union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational
decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness.
I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough
popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that
could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded.
And there are other things going on like
that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama
took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there
were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done:
reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very
similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.
The other possibility was to hand it over
to the workforce -- which owned it anyway -- turn it into a worker-owned,
worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and
have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need.
We all know or should know that the United
States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s
very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy. In that
regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a
couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to
Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC,
to Boston. It took two hours. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from
Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60
years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.
It could be done here as it’s been done in
Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have
taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the
economy.
Just to make it more surreal, while this
option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its
transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed
rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt,
which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t
happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political
mobilization. Things like this continue.
Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons
I’ve kept to domestic issues, but there are
two dangerous developments in the international arena, which are a kind of
shadow that hangs over everything we’ve discussed. There are, for the first
time in human history, real threats to the decent survival of the species.
One has been hanging around since 1945.
It’s kind of a miracle that we’ve escaped it. That’s the threat of nuclear war
and nuclear weapons. Though it isn’t being much discussed, that threat is, in
fact, being escalated by the policies of this administration and its allies.
And something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble.
The other, of course, is environmental
catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting
steps towards trying to do something about it. The United States is also taking
steps, mainly to accelerate the threat. It is the only major country that is
not only not doing something constructive to protect the environment, it’s not
even climbing on the train. In some ways, it’s pulling it backwards.
And this is connected to a huge propaganda
system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince
people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. “Why pay attention to these
scientists?”
We’re really regressing back to the dark
ages. It’s not a joke. And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest
country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted -- and in a
generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something
has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.
It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There
are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures. It’s inevitable.
But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and
around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and
political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor
Emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of numerous
best-selling political works, most recently, Hopes and Prospects, Making the Future, and Occupy, published by Zuccotti Park Press,
from which this speech, given last October, is excerpted and adapted. His web
site is www.chomsky.info.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch
and join us on Facebook.
Copyright 2012 Noam Chomsky
*
GOLDMAN
SACHS IS A MAJOR OBAMA DONOR!
“Records show that four
out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants
- Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and
Citigroup ($358,054).”
TO WORK IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, ONE MUST COME FROM SOME CRIMINAL WALL ST BANKSTER, OR BE A MEMBER OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!
DO A SEARCH ON THE BLOG FOR OBAMA’S
SEC. of LABOR HILDA SOLIS, CECELIA MUNOZ AND HIS “WISE LATINA” LA RAZA PARTY
MEMBER SONIA SOTOMAYER!
“It confirms from the inside that
three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s manic pursuit of super-profits
triggered a global financial meltdown and the deepest slump since the Great
Depression, nothing has changed in the boardrooms of corporate America. The
same fraudulent and often illegal practices that enriched the financial
aristocracy and plundered the rest of society continue unabated. The criminals
at the top, having been bailed out with trillions of taxpayer funds, are making
more money than ever, while millions of ordinary people are being driven into
poverty and homelessness.”
An insider’s view of Wall Street
criminality
15 March 2012
Greg
Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation
Wednesday in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, denouncing the bank's
“toxic” culture of avarice and fraud.
Smith
headed the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa. In his column, entitled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman
Sachs,” he describes a corporate environment that encourages and rewards big
short-term returns gained through the bilking of clients and the general
public. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients
off,” he writes.
Speaking
of one’s clients as “muppets” and describing deal-making as “ripping eyeballs
out” are commonplace at Goldman, according to Smith. The way to advance at the
Wall Street giant, he writes, is to persuade your clients “to invest in the
stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of,” get your clients
“to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman,” and trade “any
illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.”
The
column describes an operation in which laws and regulations requiring financial
institutions to deal honestly with their clients and protect their interests
are routinely violated. The insider’s indictment of Goldman Sachs highlights a
broader process—the criminalization of American capitalism as a whole.
It confirms from the inside
that three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s manic pursuit of super-profits
triggered a global financial meltdown and the deepest slump since the Great
Depression, nothing has changed in the boardrooms of corporate America. The
same fraudulent and often illegal practices that enriched the financial
aristocracy and plundered the rest of society continue unabated. The criminals
at the top, having been bailed out with trillions of taxpayer funds, are making
more money than ever, while millions of ordinary people are being driven into poverty
and homelessness.
Education,
health care, pensions are being gutted, wages are being slashed and more
austerity is on the agenda because there is supposedly “no money.” Corporate
profits and CEO pay, meanwhile, are setting new records.
This
is an indictment not simply of Goldman Sachs, or even Wall Street alone, but
rather the entire economic and political system. Every official institution—the
White House, Congress, the courts, the media, the Democratic and Republican
parties—is complicit.
Smith’s
column was widely reported in the media. NBC Nightly News led its report
Wednesday night with the story, interviewing a former chairman of the
Securities and Exchange Commission who was brought on to deplore the type of
practices described by the former Goldman executive. The ruling class is well
aware that popular anger against Wall Street is rising and capitalism itself is
becoming increasingly discredited in the eyes of millions of Americans—a
process that found an initial expression in the Occupy Wall Street protests. It
is concerned that Smith’s piece will further fuel this sentiment.
The
practices to which Smith points—and worse—are well known to the Obama
administration and the financial regulatory agencies. In April of last year, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations published a 640-page report outlining in detail the fraudulent
and illegal practices of major banks that contributed to the September 2008
crash. Fully 260 pages of that report were devoted to Goldman Sachs. They
explained chapter and verse, giving dates and naming names, how the bank
defrauded its clients by selling them mortgage securities while betting against
the same investments, without telling them it was doing so.
The
committee also documented the complicity of the credit rating firms and federal
regulators in the colossal mortgage Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2007-2008,
setting off a new world depression. It cited securities laws that had been
violated by Goldman and two other banks it examined, Washington Mutual and
Deutsche Bank, and referred this information to the Obama administration’s
Justice Department.
The response of the White
House was to do absolutely nothing. Not a single senior bank executive has been criminally
charged, let alone imprisoned, for crimes that have devastated the lives of
countless millions of people in the US and around the world. Instead, the White
House has shielded the corporate criminals.
One
Wall Street firm after another—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup,
Countrywide Financial—has been allowed to settle charges filed by the
Securities and Exchange Commission out of court, paying token fines while
admitting no wrongdoing. That this continues is seen in the filing Monday in
federal court of the sweetheart settlement between five major banks and the
state and federal governments of charges arising from the banks’ illegal
processing of foreclosures. The banks have merely to pay a combined fine of $5
billion for illegally throwing thousands of families out of their homes, with
no admission of wrongdoing. In return, they get the quashing of state
investigations that threatened to result in tens of billions in damages and
fines.
Not only does the Obama
administration protect the Wall Street criminals, it includes their
representatives among its top personnel. To cite some examples:
* Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, is the chief
of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
* Dianna Farrell, former financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, is
deputy director of the National Economic Council.
* Jacob Lew, Obama’s chief of staff, was a top executive at
Citigroup. He follows two other bankers chosen by Obama to head his White House
operations—former JPMorgan executive William Daley and former Chicago
investment banker Rahm Emanuel.
The
criminalization of the American corporate-financial elite cannot be separated
from the capitalist system itself. It is the product of a decades-long process
of crisis and decay, in which the ruling elite has increasingly separated its
wealth-making from the production of real value.
Manufacturing
and the productive infrastructure have been decimated, while financial
manipulation and speculation have come to dominate economic life. The working
class has suffered a catastrophic decline in its social position at the same
time that a parasitic financial aristocracy has come to exercise a de facto
dictatorship over the political system.
Like
all aristocracies, the American financial elite will not accept any
infringement of its wealth and power. The working class must break its grip by
mobilizing its strength in opposition to both parties of Wall Street and
fighting for the establishment of a workers’ government and socialist policies,
beginning with the nationalization of the banks and corporations and their
transformation into public enterprises under the democratic control of the
working people.
Andre
Damon and Barry Grey
The
author also recommends:
The foreclosure
fraud settlement: An amnesty for Wall Street criminals
[13 February 2012]
[13 February 2012]
Senate report on
Wall Street crash: The criminalization of the American ruling class
[18 April 2011]
[18 April 2011]
*
OBAMA IS THE BIGGEST CON JOB
IN AMERICAN HISTORY!
“Records show that four out of Obama's top
five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).”
*
HE PUNKED US GOOD WITH HIS
“CHANGE”, THEN SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH ALL OF BUSH’S ARCHITECTS FOR WALL ST
BAILOUTS AND NO REAL REGULATION, LIKE TIM GEITHNER, AND ALL THE MOST CORRUPT DEMS
OF HIS PARTY, LIKE DIANNE FEINSTEIN AND HILARY CLINTON!
AFTER SERVICING HIS
BANKSTERS, HE’S TURNED HIS ADMINISTRATION INTO A SUBSIDIARY OF THE MEXICAN
FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!
*
In what was billed by the
White House as a major speech on the economy, President Barack Obama on Tuesday
combined a potted review of American history with half-truths and lies in an
attempt to present himself as a fighter for social equality and critic of Wall
Street.
Obama, who has spent nearly
three years in the White House single-mindedly defending the interests of the
financial elite, has in recent weeks adopted this populist persona with the aim
of derailing the emergence of social protest, in the form of the Occupy Wall
Street protests, and seeking to channel it behind his reelection campaign.
The speech was notable only
for its unbridled cynicism. As always, Obama proceeded from the premise that
the American people are infinitely gullible and suffer from collective amnesia
with regard to the record of his administration.
Yet under his
watch, not a single banker, hedge fund manager or financial regulator has been
prosecuted, let alone convicted.
OBAMA IS
NOTHING BUT BUSH’S THIRD CORRUPT TERM!
In every aspect of domestic
and international policy, Obama has continued and escalated the policies of his
Republican predecessor. He has gone beyond Bush in slashing social programs,
waging aggressive war, and attacking democratic rights—including officially
ordering the assassination of American citizens.
Obama plays the populist card
8 December 2011
In
what was billed by the White House as a major speech on the economy, President
Barack Obama on Tuesday combined a potted review of American history with
half-truths and lies in an attempt to present himself as a fighter for social equality
and critic of Wall Street.
Obama, who has spent nearly
three years in the White House single-mindedly defending the interests of the
financial elite, has in recent weeks adopted this populist persona with the aim
of derailing the emergence of social protest, in the form of the Occupy Wall
Street protests, and seeking to channel it behind his reelection campaign.
Typical
of such carefully staged events, the site of Obama’s remarks—Osawatomie,
Kansas, where Theodore Roosevelt gave his 1910 “New Nationalism” speech—was
chosen for its symbolism. By wrapping himself in the mantle of Roosevelt’s
Progressive Era reform agenda, Obama hoped to lend credibility to his
improbable pose as a man of the people and opponent of the moneyed interests.
The speech was notable only
for its unbridled cynicism. As always, Obama proceeded from the premise that
the American people are infinitely gullible and suffer from collective amnesia
with regard to the record of his administration.
Reviewing
the events that led to the financial crash of 2008, Obama declared: “We all
know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them, or
even sometimes understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging
the risk and selling it off. Huge bets—and huge bonuses—made with other
people’s money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the
dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to
look at all…
“It
combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the
system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we’re
still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs and the homes and the basic
security of millions of people—innocent, hardworking Americans who had met
their responsibilities but were still left holding the bag.”
This
is a fair description of what amounts to a criminal conspiracy against the
people of the United States and the world, carried out by a financial oligarchy
that exerts absolute power over the political system. A bit further on Obama
declared his commitment to a country where “everyone plays by the same rules.”
Yet under his watch, not a
single banker, hedge fund manager or financial regulator has been prosecuted,
let alone convicted. On
the contrary, the president has handed them the keys to the national treasury
and tailored his policies to enable them to continue their speculative
activities and make more money than ever.
The
fury of the state has been reserved for those who have sought to protest against
the plundering of society by the financial elite and the resulting growth of
poverty, unemployment and inequality. They, for the most part student youth,
have been assaulted by baton-wielding police in riot gear, packing rubber
bullets and using pepper spray. The protesters have been arrested in the
thousands. Obama, with his silence, has signaled his support for these attacks,
carried out for the most part by Democratic mayors.
Obama
strained to present his policies as diametrically opposed to those of the
Republicans. After the worst economic crisis in eighty years, he said, the
Republicans “want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess.”
This
from a president who has made “bipartisanship” the watchword of his
administration and done his best to restore credibility to the Republicans
after they were repudiated in the 2008 election that brought him to power.
In every aspect of domestic
and international policy, Obama has continued and escalated the policies of his
Republican predecessor. He has gone beyond Bush in slashing social programs,
waging aggressive war, and attacking democratic rights—including officially
ordering the assassination of American citizens.
After
attributing the entire blame for the deregulation of big business and the
growth of inequality to the Republicans, ignoring the fact that these processes
proceeded apace under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, Obama
declared that his solution began with “making education a national mission.”
This
is yet another example of shameless hypocrisy from a president who has adopted
the education program that was previously the province of the Republican right,
and spearheaded an unprecedented assault on the jobs and conditions of teachers
and the very principle of public education.
Lodged
within the fog of populist phrase-mongering were code words inserted in the
speech—verbal winks and nods—to reassure Wall Street: “the free market is the
greatest force for economic progress in human history… It’s not a view that
says we should punish profit or success… business, and not government, will
always be the primary generator of good jobs… This isn’t about class warfare.”
With
tens of millions out of work and new reports each week detailing record levels
of poverty and inequality, Obama declared that capitalism has “led to a
prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.”
His
invocation of Theodore Roosevelt was preposterous on two counts. First, Obama
is not proposing the slightest measures to address social inequality, unlike
Roosevelt, who, under conditions of emerging class battles and the growth of
the socialist movement, advanced a significant bourgeois reform policy,
including a progressive taxation system, unemployment compensation, and laws to
restrict child labor and establish minimum wages.
Second,
Obama falsifies history. These reforms were not showered on the people by
benevolent presidents or bosses, they were extracted from the ruling class
through mass struggles, involving millions of workers in sit-down strikes and
general strikes that rocked entire cities and defied the murderous violence of
the employers and the state.
In
his 1910 speech, Roosevelt warned, “If the reactionary man, who thinks of
nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a
revolution.” Over the next half century, the American ruling class was forced,
kicking and screaming, to adopt measures that lessened social inequality
precisely to avoid revolution.
As
is now clear, those concessions to the working class were not permanent.
Precisely the failure of the labor movement, due to the treachery and
pro-capitalist orientation of the trade union bureaucracy, to break from the
Democratic Party and build an independent socialist movement disarmed the
working class and allowed the ruling class to wage a counteroffensive.
Obama
and the entire bourgeoisie are now seeking to utilize the economic crisis to
repeal the 20th century and destroy all of social gains of the
working class.
For
all his pseudo-populist bluster and his invocation of an earlier period of
progressive reform, Obama could offer no serious measures to address the social
crisis. His only concrete proposal was passage of an extension of his payroll
tax deduction—a measure that is striking only for its hopeless inadequacy. It
is fundamentally reactionary to boot, since it will allow corporations to
reduce their Social Security taxes, thereby draining the government benefit
fund for seniors.
The
president’s central focus is to join with the Republicans in shredding what
remains of the social safety net. “To reduce our deficit,” he boasted, “I’ve
already signed nearly $1 trillion of spending cuts into law and I’ve proposed
trillions more, including reforms that would lower the cost of Medicare and
Medicaid.”
We
will leave it to the professional apologists for the Democratic Party, from the
New York Times to the affluent upper-middle class types who occupy the
offices of the Nation, the AFL-CIO trade union apparatus and various
pseudo-left groups to try to paint in “progressive” colors what has turned out
to be the most right-wing administration in modern American history.
For
our part, the Socialist Equality Party in the US will do everything in its
power to expose those trying to hoodwink the working class with identity
politics and the hoary myth of the “lesser evilism.” The fight for social
equality means the fight for socialism and the independent political
mobilization of the working class to take political power in its own hands.
Jerry
White
Copyright
© 1998-201
*
“Records show that four out of Obama's top
five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).”
*
Wall
Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
BY TIMOTHY P
CARNEY
Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making
You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs,
GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama
was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big
Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics,
investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media
ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and
Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming
he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory
robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman
Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.”
And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics
is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the
Obama years.”
If
you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows
up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit
exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam.
Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger,
somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book
names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
*
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs,
GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama
was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big
Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
Investigative
reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and
the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is
delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling
corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s
Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The
Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell
corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
If
you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government
swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts
deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs,
this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils
down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and
those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will
make your blood boil.
*
Praise for Obamanomics
Praise for Obamanomics
“The
notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of
progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by
day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative
muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big
business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs,
taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama
years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
“‘Every
time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute
observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama
administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s
populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone
who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
“Every
libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large
corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to
read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions
of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul
—Congressman Ron Paul
“It’s
understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But
as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more
sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing
everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual,
which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
*
·
Hardcover: 256 pages
·
Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30,
2009)
·
Language: English
·
ISBN-10: 1596986123
·
ISBN-13: 978-1596986121
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