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I posted the following (more or less) on another thread, but I am going to post it again because it says what I feel eeds to be said.
This economic crisis is about greed and maximizing profits and power for the Bushie Chicago Schoolers. Please read the book. It is just amazing. The most incredible chapter I have read yet is the one on South Africa. Long before they rid their country of apartheid, the leaders of the ANC committed to a Freedom Charter which promised a fair economic policy. When the opportunity to negotiate the end of apartheid finally arrived, most of the ANC leaders focused on gaining political freedom and participation -- and left the negotiation of agreements concerning the economy up to "technicians."
As a result, while it appeared that the ANC had rid their country of apartheid, the post-apartheid government inherited the economic system including the obligation to pay the debts of the former government. Under what Naomi Klein refers to as "Chicago School orthodoxy," the same corporate interests that controlled the economy under apartheid continue to dominate post-apartheid. Here are the sad results per Naomi Klein (page 215 of The Shock Doctrine):
"Since 1994, the year the ANC took power, the number of people living on less than $1 a day has doubled, from 2 million to 4 million in 2006. Between 1991 and 2002, the unemployment rate for black South Africans more than doubled, from 23 percent to 48 percent. Of South Africa's 35 million black citizens, only five thousand earn more than $60,000 per year. The number of whites in that income bracket is twenty times higher, and many earn far more than that amount. The ANC government has built 1.8 million homes, but in the meantime 2 million people have lost their homes. Close to 1 million people have been evicted from farms in the first decade of democracy. Such evictions have meant that the number of shack dwellers has grown by 50 percent. In 2006, more than one in four South Africans lived in shacks located in informal shantytowns, many without running water or electricity."
Klein's book is fully footnoted, but I have not had a chance to look at her secondary sources.
As I read the book (have not finished it), I gain a different understanding of the motives behind the Bush administration's allowing the outsourcing of our corporations and the middle class jobs (a trend started under Reagan and continued by Bill Clinton), driving America into debt and permitting the dollar to decline so precipitously. Bush knows that the next president will be bound by the trade and loan agreements of the current administration. The only way to rescue our ruined economy, to save the precious stock market, we will be told, is to sell off federal assets --- our national parks -- our technology -- our natural resources -- everything we have. It will all be up for sale. Although the prices will be low, the only buyers will be the mega-corporations and the extremely wealthy who have benefited from the Bush tax cuts for the rich and who therefore have large fortunes ready to "invest" in a good opportunity. This is not incompetence. This is the plan, the well structured strategy of the Bushies.
Remember how the S&L crisis was brought into being and how it ended in big banks buying out the relatively small S&Ls at fire-sale prices. Well, that was nothing compared to the crisis that we will face when Bush leaves office. The worse the failures of the Bush administration, the higher the profits of his friends once the next president has to sell the nation's way out of the inevitable economic catastrophe.
This is why I am so opposed to a Hillary Clinton candidacy for our party. She may not admit it, or even realize it, but she will be the perfect corporate tool. Bill was easily manipulated by Greenspan. But his cooperation with the right on economic issues was nothing compared to how Hillary will cave when faced with the financial chaos after she is sworn in.
That is why I support Edwards. He is the only candidate who sees through the game the right-wing corporate crew are playing. He has watched their moves for many years -- in courtrooms and in the secret settlement negotiations that follow the courtroom drama. He knows how to read the small print, how to anticipate and counter each corporate tactic. We really need Edwards for president.
It's Edwards or misery in my view. Edwards, ironically, is the only candidate who can save the free enterprise system that our Founding Father intended us to enjoy -- the free enterprise that protects the existence of the farmers, the craftsmen, the inventors, the small businesses, the ordinary workers, the elderly, the children, the hospitals, the schools, the churches. He is the only candidate who has the wisdom of a Roosevelt and who will navigate us through the difficult economic and political seas that await us when Bush leaves office.
Sorry to be so aggressive and "fanatical" about this. But even if we "win" with one of the other candidates, say Hillary, we will lose the economic battle, because no candidate other than Edwards knows how the mega-corporations play their games. I firmly believe, based on his plans and message, that Edwards is the only one who "gets it."
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