AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring into this discussion Tariq Ali. We actually called you here, Tariq, to talk about Pakistan and Iraq, to talk about Afghanistan, but you had a very interesting piece called “Capitalism’s Deadly Logic: Reimagining Socialism.” Even when you say that now, when we see all that—what capitalism has wrought, people go nuts over, for example, socialized healthcare. What do you mean by “reimagining socialism”?
TARIQ ALI: Well, I think, given the scale of the crisis in the United States, you need very firm, carefully thought-out structural reforms to the system, what Robert Scheer has been talking about. In order to do this, you have to break down certain prejudices. For instance, if people think that free healthcare for every citizen of the United States is socialism, well, let them think it. I mean, what’s the big deal? I think the overwhelming majority of people in the United States, especially the poor segments, want free healthcare. Billions are being spent on bailing out these fat cats, as we’ve heard. Why can’t this money be spent to create a nationalized health service for the United States of America? The fact that a tiny little island, which has been under siege for the last forty, fifty years, Cuba, can have a national health service with cheap medicines, free for the poor, but the United States can’t, it’s quite shocking. So I’m just saying that we have to completely rethink the way in which these societies function.
Look, lots of people on the right called the New Deal socialist. It was essentially a form of social democracy. Pretty good measures were put through. And it was the deregulations pushed through by the Clinton administration which ended elements of the New Deal program. What we are saying now is, bailing out, spending money, helping Wall Street or its equivalents in the city of London, is not going to do the trick. Some serious thought is needed. This doesn’t mean that the capitalist system is totally on the verge of collapse, but, by God, it needs heavy surgery. And if you have a president not capable of doing that in times of crisis, he will not be reelected. I think the economy is going to determine the fate of the Obama administration, not foreign policy.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I think you make the point in one of your latest articles that those who think that capitalism is in collapse underestimate the resiliency of the system itself to rectify its excesses and then to usher in a new age of exploitation. Can you talk about that?
TARIQ ALI: Well, I think, you know, since the nineteenth century, there have been dozens of business cycles very similar to the one we are seeing now, not exactly the same, not analogous, but not that dissimilar: recessions, depressions, massive state intervention, recovery of economy, handing over of that economy back to the rich, recessions, depressions. So, one has to break the cycle.
And I think the cycle can only be broken by teaching. This whole notion that the market knows all, that the market is the best—I mean, people are suffering in the United States and elsewhere in the world because of that particular dogma. And I think we need to say very clearly, no, the market does not know. There’s nothing mystical about it. The market consists of human beings, and these human beings are the people who make the decisions, and they’ve made wrong decisions now for the last twenty-five years.
And the one part of the world where this particular consensus was challenged, South America, they’re doing reasonably well. More and more radical governments are being elected in South America. The latest example is El Salvador. Why? Because they challenged the Washington Consensus ten, fifteen years ago and said this system is not working for us.
Now we know it’s not working for the United States, either. I mean, I’ve just been in the Midwest. I mean, walking through Detroit and Flynt is like walking through ghost towns. I mean, you know, you can compare parts of Detroit to anywhere in the third world: you know, burnt mansions, boarded-up buildings, a dead downtown, just casinos in the center of the town. It’s quite shocking, actually, and upsetting to see this.
AMY GOODMAN: And the difference between how developing countries were forced to deal with their economic crises versus how the West is dealing with theirs?
TARIQ ALI: Well, look, I mean, what happened, when the Washington Consensus wrecked South America over the last twenty-five years, you had giant social movements. That’s the big difference with the United States. In Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Venezuela, in Argentina, in Paraguay, you had giant social movements from below, in many cases fighting the IMF, fighting the privatization proposals. And these social movements produced politicians, political leaders and political parties, which then linked to the movements and said, “Right, we’re going to change the system.”
Thursday, March 19, 2009
a little known but very sad story
those of us on the left are well aware of the crimes israel commits outside of its borders. less known are the multitude of crimes israel commits within its recognized borders. this is another tragic example of why a state built around favoritism toward an ethnic or racial group should not exist. they tell us we need to recognize israel's "right to exist," but in what form? does this systemic discrimination and oppression of non jews have a "right to exist?" israel, as it is currently constituted, does a plethora of things that should not exist. and these things need to stop. when that statement is made, it is made with the intention that israel is a fundamentally decent society that should not be opposed in any meaningful way. for sure, israel exists. the question remains how shall it exist, who shall it exist for, and what we can do to make it a society worthy of existence. israel, as a physical place, will continue to exist. but that does not mean they have a right to bomb gaza, invade lebanon, and oppress non jews within its borders. it is not israel, the physical place, but israel, the set of political, economic, and racial arrangements, whose existence is in question, and it's these arrangements that people are attempting to solidify when they say israel has a "right to exist." as a leftist, i say no to this. racism has no right to exist. invasions have no right to exist. denying people electricity has no right to exist, just as the vietnam war had no right to exist, jim crow had no right to exist, the trail of tears had no right to exist, the holocaust had no right to exist, death squads in latin america had no right to exist, and so on. what if someone in germany in the 30's, or chile in the 70's, or el salvador in the 80's, got up and said those countries have a "right to exist" as a way to stifle dissent and progressive opposition to their policies? again, germany as a physical place had a right to exist, but the nazi party, the death camps, the invasions of europe, all of the things which constituted the behavior of that state, had no such right. therefore, germany, as it existed at that time, had no right to exist.
something for israel to think about as it oppresses millions of people due to their ethnic and religious background.
A Baby's Power Struggle with Israel
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages
By JONATHAN COOK
El-Bat, Israel
Little Ashimah Abu Sbieh’s life hangs by a thread -- or more specifically, an electricity cable that runs from a noisy diesel-powered generator in the family’s backyard. Should the generator’s engine fail, she could die within minutes.
Ashimah suffers from a rare genetic condition that means her brain fails to tell her lungs to work. Without the assistance of an electric inhalator, she would simply stop breathing.
That nearly happened late last year when the generator broke down during the night. Her parents, Siham and Faris, woke to find the 11-month-old’s face blue from a lack of oxygen. They reconnected the inhalator to a set of car batteries and then battled to fix the generator before the two hours of stored power ran out.
The desperate plight of Ashimah’s parents is shared by thousands of other Bedouin families caring for chronically sick relatives who live in communities to which Israel refuses to supply electricity, said Wasim Abas of Physicians for Human Rights in Israel.
The organisation’s latest report, titled “Sentenced to Darkness”, calls the state’s denial of essential services, including running water and electricity, to 83,000 Bedouin in the southern Negev desert, “bureaucratic evil”.
Mr Abas said the lives of Bedouin patients who need a reliable supply of electricity -- to refrigerate medicines and special foods, run air-conditioning or power nebulisers and inhalators -- are being put in grave danger by official intransigence.
According to the report, 45 Bedouin villages have been denied services as a way to pressure them to renounce their title to ancestral lands and their traditional pastoral way of life. Instead, it is hoped they will move into a handful of deprived and land-starved Bedouin townships specially built by the state.
Concrete homes in the so-called unrecognised villages are under permanent threat of demolition, forcing many residents to live in tin huts and tents, and the national utility companies are barred from connecting them to services.
The Bedouin languish at the bottom of the country’s social and economic indices, with 70 per cent of children living in poverty. Israel has also located a chemical waste dump and a massive electricity generating station close to several of the Negev’s unrecognised villages, though it refuses to connect them to the grid.
Mr Abas said the lack of an electricity supply in particular posed a severe threat to the Bedouin community’s health. A fifth of all residents of unrecognised villages suffer from chronic illness, particularly asthma and diabetes, and require a reliable electrical supply to their homes for their treatment. Most must travel long distances, usually over dirt tracks, to reach health clinics and hospitals.
“We found that a lack of electricity contributed to a deterioration in the condition of these patients in about 70 per cent of cases, and directly resulted in death in two per cent of cases,” Mr Abas said.
Hopes that Israel would be forced to connect the villages to the national grid were dashed in 2005 when the courts ruled against the family of a three-year-old cancer victim, Enas al Atrash, who was demanding electricity for the family home. Doctors had warned that Enas might die without reliable refrigeration of her medicines and an air-conditioned environment.
Instead, the judges criticised the family for living in an unrecognised village, though they recommended that officials contribute to the family’s large fuel bill so they could continue running a generator.
The Physicians for Human Rights report notes that the enforcement of planning laws in the case of Bedouin villages, most of which pre-date Israel’s creation in 1948, contrasts strongly with the treatment of the many Jewish communities that have been established illegally under Israeli law.
Dozens of individual ranches in the Negev and at least 100 of what are called settlement “outposts” in the West Bank have been set up without permits from the Israeli authorities but nonetheless have been connected to services by the national utility firms.
Yeela Livnat Raanan, a lecturer in research methods at Sapir College in the Negev town of Sderot who works with a Bedouin lobby group, the Regional Council for the Unrecognised Villages, called the situation of Bedouin families “intolerable”.
She said a joint health survey conducted by the council with Physicians for Human Rights last year showed high levels of chronic illness among Bedouin children in the unrecognised villages, with 13 per cent suffering from severe asthma.
“There are numerous reasons for the high incidence of respiratory problems,” Dr Raanan said. “There is no trash collection, so garbage has to be burnt. The tin huts many Bedouin are forced to live in offer little protection from the extreme temperature range in the desert. The huts are heated with coal but cannot easily be ventilated, and the electricity generators themselves are polluting.”
Given the traditional large size of Bedouin families, she said, the problems associated with caring for a chronically sick relative afflicted many, if not most, of the Bedouin.
“The suffering of the Bedouin just does not register for most Jews in Israel,” Dr Ranaan said. “They prefer to trust government officials who tell them that the Bedouin are primitive, stupid and hostile, and that they are trying to take over state land. We have to challenge this racism.”
Ashimah’s family live in the 750-strong community of El Bat, which was finally recognised a year ago as part of a plan to develop more townships for the rapidly growing Bedouin population. Nonetheless, the residents’ chances of being connected to the electricity grid are still far off.
The state is presenting endless delays in approving the planning maps we need,” said Ibrahim Abu Sbieh, Ashimah’s grandfather and the village leader.
“There are no plans to build schools, clinics or roads. We expect things to change very slowly.”
He said the family finally dared to replace their tin hut with a concrete home seven years ago, when notified that recognition was imminent. But they have still been served with a demolition notice and are paying off a series of fines to avert destruction of their house.
Ashimah’s mother, Siham, said she lived with the constant fear of the generator failing and being unable to get her baby daughter to the nearest hospital, 35 km away in Beersheva, in time.
“Israel cuts off the electricity to Gaza and the world is outraged,” Mr Abu Sbieh said. “But we’ve been living like this for decades and no one cares.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
something for israel to think about as it oppresses millions of people due to their ethnic and religious background.
A Baby's Power Struggle with Israel
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages
By JONATHAN COOK
El-Bat, Israel
Little Ashimah Abu Sbieh’s life hangs by a thread -- or more specifically, an electricity cable that runs from a noisy diesel-powered generator in the family’s backyard. Should the generator’s engine fail, she could die within minutes.
Ashimah suffers from a rare genetic condition that means her brain fails to tell her lungs to work. Without the assistance of an electric inhalator, she would simply stop breathing.
That nearly happened late last year when the generator broke down during the night. Her parents, Siham and Faris, woke to find the 11-month-old’s face blue from a lack of oxygen. They reconnected the inhalator to a set of car batteries and then battled to fix the generator before the two hours of stored power ran out.
The desperate plight of Ashimah’s parents is shared by thousands of other Bedouin families caring for chronically sick relatives who live in communities to which Israel refuses to supply electricity, said Wasim Abas of Physicians for Human Rights in Israel.
The organisation’s latest report, titled “Sentenced to Darkness”, calls the state’s denial of essential services, including running water and electricity, to 83,000 Bedouin in the southern Negev desert, “bureaucratic evil”.
Mr Abas said the lives of Bedouin patients who need a reliable supply of electricity -- to refrigerate medicines and special foods, run air-conditioning or power nebulisers and inhalators -- are being put in grave danger by official intransigence.
According to the report, 45 Bedouin villages have been denied services as a way to pressure them to renounce their title to ancestral lands and their traditional pastoral way of life. Instead, it is hoped they will move into a handful of deprived and land-starved Bedouin townships specially built by the state.
Concrete homes in the so-called unrecognised villages are under permanent threat of demolition, forcing many residents to live in tin huts and tents, and the national utility companies are barred from connecting them to services.
The Bedouin languish at the bottom of the country’s social and economic indices, with 70 per cent of children living in poverty. Israel has also located a chemical waste dump and a massive electricity generating station close to several of the Negev’s unrecognised villages, though it refuses to connect them to the grid.
Mr Abas said the lack of an electricity supply in particular posed a severe threat to the Bedouin community’s health. A fifth of all residents of unrecognised villages suffer from chronic illness, particularly asthma and diabetes, and require a reliable electrical supply to their homes for their treatment. Most must travel long distances, usually over dirt tracks, to reach health clinics and hospitals.
“We found that a lack of electricity contributed to a deterioration in the condition of these patients in about 70 per cent of cases, and directly resulted in death in two per cent of cases,” Mr Abas said.
Hopes that Israel would be forced to connect the villages to the national grid were dashed in 2005 when the courts ruled against the family of a three-year-old cancer victim, Enas al Atrash, who was demanding electricity for the family home. Doctors had warned that Enas might die without reliable refrigeration of her medicines and an air-conditioned environment.
Instead, the judges criticised the family for living in an unrecognised village, though they recommended that officials contribute to the family’s large fuel bill so they could continue running a generator.
The Physicians for Human Rights report notes that the enforcement of planning laws in the case of Bedouin villages, most of which pre-date Israel’s creation in 1948, contrasts strongly with the treatment of the many Jewish communities that have been established illegally under Israeli law.
Dozens of individual ranches in the Negev and at least 100 of what are called settlement “outposts” in the West Bank have been set up without permits from the Israeli authorities but nonetheless have been connected to services by the national utility firms.
Yeela Livnat Raanan, a lecturer in research methods at Sapir College in the Negev town of Sderot who works with a Bedouin lobby group, the Regional Council for the Unrecognised Villages, called the situation of Bedouin families “intolerable”.
She said a joint health survey conducted by the council with Physicians for Human Rights last year showed high levels of chronic illness among Bedouin children in the unrecognised villages, with 13 per cent suffering from severe asthma.
“There are numerous reasons for the high incidence of respiratory problems,” Dr Raanan said. “There is no trash collection, so garbage has to be burnt. The tin huts many Bedouin are forced to live in offer little protection from the extreme temperature range in the desert. The huts are heated with coal but cannot easily be ventilated, and the electricity generators themselves are polluting.”
Given the traditional large size of Bedouin families, she said, the problems associated with caring for a chronically sick relative afflicted many, if not most, of the Bedouin.
“The suffering of the Bedouin just does not register for most Jews in Israel,” Dr Ranaan said. “They prefer to trust government officials who tell them that the Bedouin are primitive, stupid and hostile, and that they are trying to take over state land. We have to challenge this racism.”
Ashimah’s family live in the 750-strong community of El Bat, which was finally recognised a year ago as part of a plan to develop more townships for the rapidly growing Bedouin population. Nonetheless, the residents’ chances of being connected to the electricity grid are still far off.
The state is presenting endless delays in approving the planning maps we need,” said Ibrahim Abu Sbieh, Ashimah’s grandfather and the village leader.
“There are no plans to build schools, clinics or roads. We expect things to change very slowly.”
He said the family finally dared to replace their tin hut with a concrete home seven years ago, when notified that recognition was imminent. But they have still been served with a demolition notice and are paying off a series of fines to avert destruction of their house.
Ashimah’s mother, Siham, said she lived with the constant fear of the generator failing and being unable to get her baby daughter to the nearest hospital, 35 km away in Beersheva, in time.
“Israel cuts off the electricity to Gaza and the world is outraged,” Mr Abu Sbieh said. “But we’ve been living like this for decades and no one cares.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Bait and Switch
The Real AIG Conspiracy
By MICHAEL HUDSON
It may seem odd, but the public outrage against $135 million in AIG bonuses is a godsend to Wall Street, AIG scoundrels included. How can the media be so preoccupied with the discovery that there is self-serving greed to be found in the financial sector? Every TV channel and every newspaper in the country, from right to left, have made these bonuses the lead story over the past two days.
What is wrong with this picture? Is there not something over-inflated about the outrage led most vociferously by Senator Charles Schumer and Rep. Barney Frank, the two leading shills for the bank giveaways over the past year? And does Pres. Obama perhaps find it convenient that finally, at long last, he has been able to criticize something that he believes Wall Street has done wrong? Even the Wall Street Journal has gotten into the act. The government’s takeover of AIG, it pointed out, “uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions.” So much more greed is involved than just that of AIG employees. The firm owed much more to other players – abroad as well as on Wall Street – than the assets it had. That is what drove it to insolvency. And popular opposition has been rising to how Obama and McCain could have banded together to support the bailout that, in retrospect, amounts to trillions and trillions of dollars thrown down the drain. Not really down the drain at all, of course – but given to financial speculators on the winning “smart” side of AIG’s bad financial gambles.
“The Washington crowd wants to focus on bonuses because it aims public anger on private actors,” the Journal accused in a March 17 editorial. But instead of explaining that the shift is away from Wall Street grabbers of a thousand times the amount of bonuses being contested, it blames its usual all-purpose bete noire: Congress. Where the right and left differ is just whom the public should be directing its anger at!
Here’s the problem with all the hoopla over the $135 million in AIG bonuses: This sum is only less than 0.1 per cent – one thousandth – of the $183 BILLION that the U.S. Treasury gave to AIG as a “pass-through” to its counterparties. This sum, over a thousand times the magnitude of the bonuses on which public attention is conveniently being focused by Wall Street promoters, did not stay with AIG. For over six months, the public media and Congressmen have been trying to find out just where this money DID go. Bloomberg brought a lawsuit to find out. Only to be met with a wall of silence.
Until finally, on Sunday night, March 15, the government finally released the details. They were indeed highly embarrassing. The largest recipient turned out to be just what earlier financial reports had rumored: Paulson’s own firm, Goldman Sachs, headed the list. It was owed $13 billion in counterparty claims. Here’s the picture that’s emerging. Last September, Treasury Secretary Paulson, from Goldman Sachs, drew up a terse 3-page memo outlining his bailout proposal. The plan specified that whatever he and other Treasury officials did (thus including his subordinates, also from Goldman Sachs), could not be challenged legally or undone, much less prosecuted. This condition enraged Congress, which rejected the bailout in its first incarnation.
It now looks as if Paulson had good reason to put in a fatal legal clause blocking any clawback of funds given by the Treasury to AIG’s counterparties. This is where public outrage should be focused.
Instead, the leading Congressional shepherds of the bailout legislation – along with Obama, who came out in his final, Friday night presidential debate with McCain strongly in favor of the bailout in Paulson’s awful “short” version – have been highlighting the AIG executives receiving bonuses, not the company’s counterparties.
There are two questions that one always must ask when a political operation is being launched. First, qui bono -- who benefits? And second, why now? In my experience, timing almost always is the key to figuring out the dynamics at work.
Regarding qui bono, what does Sen. Schumer, Rep. Frank, Pres. Obama and other Wall Street sponsors gain from this public outcry? For starters, it depicts them as hard taskmasters of the banking and financial sector, not its lobbyists scurrying to execute one giveaway after another. So the AIG kerfuffle has muddied the water about where their political loyalties really lie. It enables them to strike a misleading pose – and hence to pose as “honest brokers” next time they dishonestly give away the next few trillion dollars to their major sponsors and campaign contributors.
Regarding the timing, I think I have answered that above. The uproar about AIG bonuses has effectively distracted attention from the AIG counterparties who received the $183 billion in Treasury giveaways. The “final” sum to be given to its counterparties has been rumored to be $250 billion, do Sen. Schumer, Rep. Frank and Pres. Obama still have a lot more work to do for Wall Street in the coming year or so.
To succeed in this work – while mitigating the public outrage already rising against the bad bailouts – they need to strike precisely the pose that they’re striking now. It is an exercise in deception.
The moral should be: The larger the crocodile tears shed over giving bonuses to AIG individuals (who seem to be largely on the healthy, bona fide insurance side of AIG’s business, not its hedge-fund Ponzi-scheme racket), the more they will distract public attention from the $180 billion giveaway, and the better they can position themselves to give away yet more government money (Treasury bonds and Federal Reserve deposits) to their favorite financial charities.
Let’s go after the REAL money given to AIG – the $183 billion! I realize that this has already been paid out, and we can’t get it back from the counterparties who knew that Alan Greenspan and George Bush and Hank Paulson were steering the U.S. economy off a real estate cliff, a derivatives cliff and a balance-of-payments cliff all wrapped up into one by betting against collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and insuring these casino bets with AIG. That money has been siphoned off from the Treasury fair and square, by putting their own proxies in the key government slots, the better to serve them.
So let’s go after them altogether. Sen. Schumer said to the AIG bonus recipients that the I.R.S. can go after them and get the money back one way or another. And it can indeed go after the $183-billion bailout recipients. All it has to do is re-instate the estate tax and raise the marginal income and wealth-tax rates to the (already reduced) Clinton-era levels.
The money can be recovered. And that’s just what Mr. Schumer, Mr. Frank and others don’t want to see the public discussing. That’s why they’ve diverted attention onto this trivia. It’s the time-honored way to get people not to talk about the big picture and what’s really important.
Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com
this nails the issue pretty well. this government continues to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at these corporations, and then rants when they throw millions at themselves. the real crime is systemic, not personal. of course, the press will demonize a few stiffs who took the bonuses. yes, these men are crumbs, but the system they represent is the real criminal. it is our own government that has wasted the real money, and now wants to turn around and espouse populist rhetoric when it suits their purposes. it is really a big joke.
as always.
The Real AIG Conspiracy
By MICHAEL HUDSON
It may seem odd, but the public outrage against $135 million in AIG bonuses is a godsend to Wall Street, AIG scoundrels included. How can the media be so preoccupied with the discovery that there is self-serving greed to be found in the financial sector? Every TV channel and every newspaper in the country, from right to left, have made these bonuses the lead story over the past two days.
What is wrong with this picture? Is there not something over-inflated about the outrage led most vociferously by Senator Charles Schumer and Rep. Barney Frank, the two leading shills for the bank giveaways over the past year? And does Pres. Obama perhaps find it convenient that finally, at long last, he has been able to criticize something that he believes Wall Street has done wrong? Even the Wall Street Journal has gotten into the act. The government’s takeover of AIG, it pointed out, “uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions.” So much more greed is involved than just that of AIG employees. The firm owed much more to other players – abroad as well as on Wall Street – than the assets it had. That is what drove it to insolvency. And popular opposition has been rising to how Obama and McCain could have banded together to support the bailout that, in retrospect, amounts to trillions and trillions of dollars thrown down the drain. Not really down the drain at all, of course – but given to financial speculators on the winning “smart” side of AIG’s bad financial gambles.
“The Washington crowd wants to focus on bonuses because it aims public anger on private actors,” the Journal accused in a March 17 editorial. But instead of explaining that the shift is away from Wall Street grabbers of a thousand times the amount of bonuses being contested, it blames its usual all-purpose bete noire: Congress. Where the right and left differ is just whom the public should be directing its anger at!
Here’s the problem with all the hoopla over the $135 million in AIG bonuses: This sum is only less than 0.1 per cent – one thousandth – of the $183 BILLION that the U.S. Treasury gave to AIG as a “pass-through” to its counterparties. This sum, over a thousand times the magnitude of the bonuses on which public attention is conveniently being focused by Wall Street promoters, did not stay with AIG. For over six months, the public media and Congressmen have been trying to find out just where this money DID go. Bloomberg brought a lawsuit to find out. Only to be met with a wall of silence.
Until finally, on Sunday night, March 15, the government finally released the details. They were indeed highly embarrassing. The largest recipient turned out to be just what earlier financial reports had rumored: Paulson’s own firm, Goldman Sachs, headed the list. It was owed $13 billion in counterparty claims. Here’s the picture that’s emerging. Last September, Treasury Secretary Paulson, from Goldman Sachs, drew up a terse 3-page memo outlining his bailout proposal. The plan specified that whatever he and other Treasury officials did (thus including his subordinates, also from Goldman Sachs), could not be challenged legally or undone, much less prosecuted. This condition enraged Congress, which rejected the bailout in its first incarnation.
It now looks as if Paulson had good reason to put in a fatal legal clause blocking any clawback of funds given by the Treasury to AIG’s counterparties. This is where public outrage should be focused.
Instead, the leading Congressional shepherds of the bailout legislation – along with Obama, who came out in his final, Friday night presidential debate with McCain strongly in favor of the bailout in Paulson’s awful “short” version – have been highlighting the AIG executives receiving bonuses, not the company’s counterparties.
There are two questions that one always must ask when a political operation is being launched. First, qui bono -- who benefits? And second, why now? In my experience, timing almost always is the key to figuring out the dynamics at work.
Regarding qui bono, what does Sen. Schumer, Rep. Frank, Pres. Obama and other Wall Street sponsors gain from this public outcry? For starters, it depicts them as hard taskmasters of the banking and financial sector, not its lobbyists scurrying to execute one giveaway after another. So the AIG kerfuffle has muddied the water about where their political loyalties really lie. It enables them to strike a misleading pose – and hence to pose as “honest brokers” next time they dishonestly give away the next few trillion dollars to their major sponsors and campaign contributors.
Regarding the timing, I think I have answered that above. The uproar about AIG bonuses has effectively distracted attention from the AIG counterparties who received the $183 billion in Treasury giveaways. The “final” sum to be given to its counterparties has been rumored to be $250 billion, do Sen. Schumer, Rep. Frank and Pres. Obama still have a lot more work to do for Wall Street in the coming year or so.
To succeed in this work – while mitigating the public outrage already rising against the bad bailouts – they need to strike precisely the pose that they’re striking now. It is an exercise in deception.
The moral should be: The larger the crocodile tears shed over giving bonuses to AIG individuals (who seem to be largely on the healthy, bona fide insurance side of AIG’s business, not its hedge-fund Ponzi-scheme racket), the more they will distract public attention from the $180 billion giveaway, and the better they can position themselves to give away yet more government money (Treasury bonds and Federal Reserve deposits) to their favorite financial charities.
Let’s go after the REAL money given to AIG – the $183 billion! I realize that this has already been paid out, and we can’t get it back from the counterparties who knew that Alan Greenspan and George Bush and Hank Paulson were steering the U.S. economy off a real estate cliff, a derivatives cliff and a balance-of-payments cliff all wrapped up into one by betting against collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and insuring these casino bets with AIG. That money has been siphoned off from the Treasury fair and square, by putting their own proxies in the key government slots, the better to serve them.
So let’s go after them altogether. Sen. Schumer said to the AIG bonus recipients that the I.R.S. can go after them and get the money back one way or another. And it can indeed go after the $183-billion bailout recipients. All it has to do is re-instate the estate tax and raise the marginal income and wealth-tax rates to the (already reduced) Clinton-era levels.
The money can be recovered. And that’s just what Mr. Schumer, Mr. Frank and others don’t want to see the public discussing. That’s why they’ve diverted attention onto this trivia. It’s the time-honored way to get people not to talk about the big picture and what’s really important.
Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com
this nails the issue pretty well. this government continues to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at these corporations, and then rants when they throw millions at themselves. the real crime is systemic, not personal. of course, the press will demonize a few stiffs who took the bonuses. yes, these men are crumbs, but the system they represent is the real criminal. it is our own government that has wasted the real money, and now wants to turn around and espouse populist rhetoric when it suits their purposes. it is really a big joke.
as always.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
there was something in that book on the weather underground
i forget who said it, but it went something like this..."we made a lot of mistakes, but we didn't make the biggest mistake, which was to do nothing."
this is the crime of the average american. he kills through his inaction. i, you, all of us, to some extent, are culpable. but, alas, we are also capable. the point is not perfection. that could never be. but surely, something can be done by all of us. lately, i have been more generous with my money. it's not enough, but at least some good will come of it. still, it has the taste of a cop out. i would like to fight the system, but that would entail fighting, which i haven't done since i was in the 8th grade, and that was against a girl half my size.
but hey, i did win.
a suspension followed.
surely, an expulsion may follow from fighting the system.
so, i soldier on, caught up in the wrong, or non, battles of work and rent. all in all, i have it easy, and really shouldn't complain.
and yet, how fulfilling it would be, if just for a moment, to throw myself, with full force, against the imperial monster.
if only for a moment.
weather underground, black panthers, zapatistas, iww, and many more; a man from the sidelines salutes you.
the check is in the mail.
i think i'll go with some dolphy today.
this is the crime of the average american. he kills through his inaction. i, you, all of us, to some extent, are culpable. but, alas, we are also capable. the point is not perfection. that could never be. but surely, something can be done by all of us. lately, i have been more generous with my money. it's not enough, but at least some good will come of it. still, it has the taste of a cop out. i would like to fight the system, but that would entail fighting, which i haven't done since i was in the 8th grade, and that was against a girl half my size.
but hey, i did win.
a suspension followed.
surely, an expulsion may follow from fighting the system.
so, i soldier on, caught up in the wrong, or non, battles of work and rent. all in all, i have it easy, and really shouldn't complain.
and yet, how fulfilling it would be, if just for a moment, to throw myself, with full force, against the imperial monster.
if only for a moment.
weather underground, black panthers, zapatistas, iww, and many more; a man from the sidelines salutes you.
the check is in the mail.
i think i'll go with some dolphy today.
mercy mercy me
Henry David Thoreau sez: “If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”
Murray Bookchin sez: “The notion that man must dominate nature emerges directly from the domination of man by man … The plundering of the human spirit by the marketplace is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.”
Murray Bookchin sez: “The notion that man must dominate nature emerges directly from the domination of man by man … The plundering of the human spirit by the marketplace is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital.”
interesting
Sara Jane Olson to be Released from Jail
Sara Jane Olson is set to be released today from a California prison. She was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s. She was arrested in 1999 after living for twenty-five years underground. She pleaded guilty to taking part in two attempts to bomb the Los Angeles Police Department in 1975, but later proclaimed her innocence.
Richard Aoki, Former Black Panther, 1938-2009
And the civil rights activist Richard Aoki has died at the age of seventy-one. He was an early member of the Black Panther Party and later served as a field marshal for the Panthers. He was the only Asian American to hold a leadership role in the group. Aoki was born in 1938 in California and spent part of his childhood living in an internment camp during World War II.
interesting. cool that there was an asian american leader in the panthers. the panthers actually had several non blacks, including some latinos who went on to help create the young lords. the internment must have been a radicalizing experience, to say the least. malcolm's friend yuri kochiyama was also interned as a child. aoki must have been a cool dude. as for olson, 25 years underground? amazing. it's hard enough for me to survive a week above ground. people such as olson and aoki committed themselves to the struggle for creating a better world. as i sit here blogging, i can't help but compare the level of their commitment and courage to my own.
better to think of something else, before i really lose it.
Sara Jane Olson is set to be released today from a California prison. She was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s. She was arrested in 1999 after living for twenty-five years underground. She pleaded guilty to taking part in two attempts to bomb the Los Angeles Police Department in 1975, but later proclaimed her innocence.
Richard Aoki, Former Black Panther, 1938-2009
And the civil rights activist Richard Aoki has died at the age of seventy-one. He was an early member of the Black Panther Party and later served as a field marshal for the Panthers. He was the only Asian American to hold a leadership role in the group. Aoki was born in 1938 in California and spent part of his childhood living in an internment camp during World War II.
interesting. cool that there was an asian american leader in the panthers. the panthers actually had several non blacks, including some latinos who went on to help create the young lords. the internment must have been a radicalizing experience, to say the least. malcolm's friend yuri kochiyama was also interned as a child. aoki must have been a cool dude. as for olson, 25 years underground? amazing. it's hard enough for me to survive a week above ground. people such as olson and aoki committed themselves to the struggle for creating a better world. as i sit here blogging, i can't help but compare the level of their commitment and courage to my own.
better to think of something else, before i really lose it.
another shot fired
Israeli Headshots in the West Bank
Shooting Tristan Anderson
By SCOTT HANDLEMAN
I had the honor to get to know Tristan Anderson last year as his lawyer in a nonviolent protest case.
Last Friday, at a rally against the ongoing construction of Israel's "separation wall," Tristan was shot in the head by a high-velocity tear-gas cannister. He was taking photographs at a weekly demonstration in the West Bank village of Ni'lin, which stands to lose 25% of its remaining land to the wall. (The wall was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Undertaken in the name of state security, it effects a further massive land theft by the Israeli government on behalf of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.)
Tristan's skull and face were shattered. Surgeons removed part of the frontal lobe of his brain, and he may lose an eye.
Because the Israeli army does not allow Palestinian ambulances into Israel, Tristan's ambulance was detained for 15 minutes at a military checkpoint, while he lay bleeding from his brain. He was ultimately transferred to an Israeli ambulance.
Israeli government spokespersons said the soldiers followed proper policy, as the protest took place in a closed military zone. This stance is hardly surprising. Since July 2008, Israeli soldiers have killed four unarmed residents of Ni'lin, ages ranging from 10 to 22, at demonstrations against the wall. Three of these four Palestinian youths were shot in the head, and one in the back; three by live ammo, and one by "rubber-coated steel bullets" that lodged in his brain. (Details about each of those shootings is at http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324.)
The question is whether the Israeli soldiers were indiscriminately rocketing high-velocity cannisters straight at the crowd, or whether from 50 meters a soldier mistook Tristan for Palestinian, and aimed a tear gas cannon directly at his head. Tristan was standing still when he got hit.
There will be a demonstration at the Israeli consulate in San Francisco this afternoon at 4pm.
Scott Handleman is a defense lawyer in the Bay Area. He can be reached at: shandleman@gmail.com
and so another american citizen is brutalized by the israeli military. remember how we supposedly went to war with grenada to defend a handful of american medical students, and how we were "furious" with panama when an american couple was attacked? well, for reasons that had nothing to do with these americans, we ended up killing thousands in these two nations. meanwhile, in israel, we fund, to the tune of billions of dollars a year, the israeli military, which then uses that money to kill anyone who stands in their path of brutalizing the palestinian people. we are near the six year anniversary of the murder of rachel corrie. it seems israel wants to celebrate it in style.
with our tax dollars.
this article is good, but i take issue with one of the points. it says the question is whether israel was firing indiscriminately, or whether they aimed directly at this young man's head. is one better than the other? is it justifiable for israeli soldiers to fire indiscriminately? would it help those who were murdered to know that they were not fired at directly? and is it worse for israel to kill americans than it is to kill palestinians? of course it isn't. the fact is, once a state has gotten used to murdering anyone who stands in its way, it begins to spread the murder around. and when no one, including the u.s., calls them on their brutality, then it just gets worse. and of course, we don't care about young americans being killed by brutal militaries. our own brutal military is sending young americans off to kill and be killed each and every day, so why should we expect them to become concerned now? they are interested in their own power, in controlling resources, and in extending their political and economic influence. if documenting the mistreatment of americans helps to further these goals, then it will be front page news. if not, no one will know, and the babble about israel being a democracy that has a right to exist will go on and on, as if nothing has happened.
Shooting Tristan Anderson
By SCOTT HANDLEMAN
I had the honor to get to know Tristan Anderson last year as his lawyer in a nonviolent protest case.
Last Friday, at a rally against the ongoing construction of Israel's "separation wall," Tristan was shot in the head by a high-velocity tear-gas cannister. He was taking photographs at a weekly demonstration in the West Bank village of Ni'lin, which stands to lose 25% of its remaining land to the wall. (The wall was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Undertaken in the name of state security, it effects a further massive land theft by the Israeli government on behalf of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.)
Tristan's skull and face were shattered. Surgeons removed part of the frontal lobe of his brain, and he may lose an eye.
Because the Israeli army does not allow Palestinian ambulances into Israel, Tristan's ambulance was detained for 15 minutes at a military checkpoint, while he lay bleeding from his brain. He was ultimately transferred to an Israeli ambulance.
Israeli government spokespersons said the soldiers followed proper policy, as the protest took place in a closed military zone. This stance is hardly surprising. Since July 2008, Israeli soldiers have killed four unarmed residents of Ni'lin, ages ranging from 10 to 22, at demonstrations against the wall. Three of these four Palestinian youths were shot in the head, and one in the back; three by live ammo, and one by "rubber-coated steel bullets" that lodged in his brain. (Details about each of those shootings is at http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324.)
The question is whether the Israeli soldiers were indiscriminately rocketing high-velocity cannisters straight at the crowd, or whether from 50 meters a soldier mistook Tristan for Palestinian, and aimed a tear gas cannon directly at his head. Tristan was standing still when he got hit.
There will be a demonstration at the Israeli consulate in San Francisco this afternoon at 4pm.
Scott Handleman is a defense lawyer in the Bay Area. He can be reached at: shandleman@gmail.com
and so another american citizen is brutalized by the israeli military. remember how we supposedly went to war with grenada to defend a handful of american medical students, and how we were "furious" with panama when an american couple was attacked? well, for reasons that had nothing to do with these americans, we ended up killing thousands in these two nations. meanwhile, in israel, we fund, to the tune of billions of dollars a year, the israeli military, which then uses that money to kill anyone who stands in their path of brutalizing the palestinian people. we are near the six year anniversary of the murder of rachel corrie. it seems israel wants to celebrate it in style.
with our tax dollars.
this article is good, but i take issue with one of the points. it says the question is whether israel was firing indiscriminately, or whether they aimed directly at this young man's head. is one better than the other? is it justifiable for israeli soldiers to fire indiscriminately? would it help those who were murdered to know that they were not fired at directly? and is it worse for israel to kill americans than it is to kill palestinians? of course it isn't. the fact is, once a state has gotten used to murdering anyone who stands in its way, it begins to spread the murder around. and when no one, including the u.s., calls them on their brutality, then it just gets worse. and of course, we don't care about young americans being killed by brutal militaries. our own brutal military is sending young americans off to kill and be killed each and every day, so why should we expect them to become concerned now? they are interested in their own power, in controlling resources, and in extending their political and economic influence. if documenting the mistreatment of americans helps to further these goals, then it will be front page news. if not, no one will know, and the babble about israel being a democracy that has a right to exist will go on and on, as if nothing has happened.
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