The People v. the Bankers -- Greece Today, US Tomorrow

[Octafish]

Details of the New Feudalism, a model for controlling the masses mob through finance.

Greece Today, US Tomorrow

The People v. the Bankers

By MICHAEL HUDSON
CounterPunch
May 11, 2010

Financial lobbyists here in the U.S. are using the Greek crisis as an object lesson to warn about the need to cut back public spending on Social Security and Medicare. This is the opposite of what the Greek demonstrators are demanding: to reverse the global tax shift off property and finance onto labor, and to give labor’s financial claims for retirement pensions priority over claims by the banks to get fully paid on hundreds of billions of dollars of recklessly bad loans recently reduced to junk status.

SNIP...

Next up: economic dystopia

SNIP...

Political, social, fiscal and economic power is being transferred to the EU bureaucracy and its financial controllers in the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF, whose austerity plans and related anti-labor programs direct governments to sell off the public domain, land and subsoil wealth, public enterprises, and to commit future tax revenues to pay creditor nations. This policy already has been imposed on “New Europe” (the post-Soviet economies and Iceland) since autumn 2008. It is now to be imposed on Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. No wonder there are riots!

For observers who missed Iceland and Latvia last year, Greece is the newest and so far the largest battlefield. At least Iceland and the Baltics have the option of re-denominating loans in their own currency, writing down their foreign debts at will and taxing property to recapture for the government the revenue that has been pledged to foreign bankers. But Greece is locked into a European currency union, run by unelected financial officials who have inverted the historical meaning of democracy. Instead of the economy’s most important sector – finance – being subject to electoral politics, central banks (the designated lobbyists for commercial and investment bankers) have been made independent of political checks and balances.

Right-wingers in Europe and the United States (such as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke) call this the “hallmark of democracy.” It actually is the stamp of oligarchy, stripping away control over the economy’s credit allocation – and hence, forward planning – while giving high finance a stranglehold over public spending programs.

Iceland, Latvia and now Greece are the opening shots in the resulting global campaign to roll back the great democratic reform program of the 19th century and the Progressive Era: taxation of land and the “unearned increment” of price gains for real estate, stocks and bonds, and subordination of the financial sector to the needs of economic growth under democratic direction. This doctrine was still being followed by the post-1945 era of progressive taxation that saw the 20th century’s greatest rise in living standards and economic growth. But most countries have reversed the fiscal trend since 1980.Tax collectors have “freed” income from public obligation only to see it pledged to banks for higher loans to bid up property prices.

CONTINUED...

Gosh. We are not wage slaves. Slaves got three squares, shelter and health care.



So, who's the real mob?

[ShortnFiery]

1. Yes, it's coming. Taxes are lower for the bloated super-rich: the rest = LOWER standard of living.

[Octafish]

13. Love the Demotivator!

Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

[NNN0LHI]

2. When a country imports everything and exports nothing this will be the end result every time

Building websites isn't going to pay the bills when they come due.

Don

[Turbineguy]

6. See the history of Spain.

15th to 17th centuries.

[ShortnFiery]

We need to stop fighting each other and unite against the strangle-hold of the ruling elites.

If it takes a combined effort of voting out incumbents until we get "for the people" representatives, then so be it. We must get beyond our petty bickering and see that it's the filthy stinking rich - Political Elite Corporatists (both parties) who are our TRUE enemies.

Those of us representative of the non-investor classes must get beyond our differences and STAND UNITED within the World Community ... lest we wish to have OWNERS who don't care about the welfare of "the masses."

[NNN0LHI]

11. But you do understand though ...

... that it would be awful hard for me as a retired UAW member to storm the barricades along side of someone who drove their imported car to the riots?

Don't you?

Don

[Hannah Bell]

22. that battle was over in the 80s. how about the parts in your "american made" car?

the 80s were when people needed to take a stand on that -- they didn't, & we reap the whirlwind today --

today was the day people needed to take a stand on detroit's phoney admin-assisted "bankruptcy" to offload its obligations to its workers -- & once again, didn't.

[NNN0LHI]

24. Perhaps your battle was over in the 80s?

Mine was just beginning about then.

I don't give up that easily.

Don

[Hannah Bell]

25. the battle to "buy american" was over in the 80s. even nominally american-made

cars are full of foreign-made parts & pieces;

there's effectively no way for buyers to determine the real % us jobs involved in the cars they buy.

that's deliberate ruling class policy, of course; that people not have the information to make those choices.

rather than chastising people for not buying "american," i just think there are more useful things to work on.

[dotymed]

29. Unifying the masses has to be done immediately.

There is no time to waste. The 80% of the "lower class" have to be made aware of the need to unify and organize like a minuteman. The "ruling class" has accelerated their takeover since the barriers have been destroyed. Seriously, we are facing chaos on a global scale. That might be great for the anarchists and the elite but other countries are falling. Maybe, if Greek citizens had realized the need for mass demonstrations, a year ago, they would be in a stronger position right now. We need to organize (as a retired UAW member you know about organizing and its necessity) yesterday or we won't stand a chance. Seriously, I am not being dramatic or a chicken little, the sky is really falling and if we don't show our numbers and opposition, it will be a greedy bloodbath.

[Possumpoint]

12. May I Revise What You Said?

When a country exports much less then what it imports, it is inviting economic disaster.

[NNN0LHI]

15. Absolutely that is how it begins

Just 25 years ago the US was the number one exporter. Now we are fourth.

We are on the road to decline.

Ain't there yet, but if things don't change soon we will get there.

Don

[Octafish]

17. Detroiters have been saying that since the Vietnam War.

Of course, Corporate McPravda lost the press release.

How the Press Helped Destroy the Auto Industry

Detroit's Collapse: the Untold Story

By EAMONN FINGLETON
CounterPunch

For decades East Asian competition has played a controversial role in the decline of the American car industry. Both Japan and Korea have long been accused of unfair trade and closed markets. For their part Japanese and Korean officials have argued that their markets are open and that an incompetent and heedless Detroit doesn't make the sort of cars their consumers want.

In all the charges and countercharges, little of the remarkable truth of Detroit's trade problems has come out. To see how well -- or rather how badly -- you understand the background, try this quiz:

1. What was the Detroit companies' share of the Japanese market in 1930? (a) About 90 per cent. (b) About 20 per cent. (c) Less than 4 per cent.

2. How many models do the Detroit corporations currently make with the steering wheel on the right (the standard configuration for Japan)? (a) More than 40. (b) 12. (c) 3.

3. What was the combined share of all foreign makers – American, European, and Japanese – in the Korean car market in the last decade? (a) Less than 2 per cent. (b) Around 15 per cent. (c) More than 70 per cent.

The correct answer in each case is (a).

If you flunked, don't feel bad. Just cancel your newspaper subscription.

For decades American press coverage of global car industry competition has been abysmal. Reporters and commentators have almost never dug below the surface and their idea of fact checking has too often consisted merely of "accurately" recycling previous observers' errors. Worse many commentators have displayed an almost venomously elitist bias against Detroit. In short, readers of the American press have been fed a diet of falsehoods, while key facts that give the lie to the foreign trade lobby’s special pleading have been swept under the carpet.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/fingleton07032009.html

Thank you for knowing what's what, Don. Whatever happened to newspapers, anyway?

[dotymed]

28. That is the plan currently and purposefully implemented.

These "deregulated" capitalist monsters have already tipped their hand.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x464274

watch the clip. If we do not organize the "lower class" 80% of Americans, that IS millions of people, to protest these policies, in the streets (non-violently), to show the many, many people opposed to "serfdom 2.0", we will be steamrollered. If we do show our numbers and our determination, we might stand a chance.

[Blue_Tires]

33. +1

[Blue_Tires]

3. ttt

[Octafish]

18. Leaked CIA report says 50,000 sold into slavery in US every year

Who would think such a thing is possible, in today's day and age?

Leaked CIA report says 50,000 sold into slavery in US every year

By Barry Grey
3 April 2000

A Central Intelligence Agency report leaked to the New York Times describes a flourishing trade in slave labor that brings some 50,000 women and children into the United States every year to serve as prostitutes, domestic servants or bonded workers. The report estimates that the number of slave laborers imported into the US from around the world has grown rapidly over the past decade, and predicts their ranks will continue to increase.

The scale of human misery indicated in the report is difficult to quantify: women and children from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe lured to the US with promises of jobs and educational opportunities, only to be forced at gunpoint to work in brothels or sweatshops, or labor as domestics. Others, born into unspeakable poverty, are sold into bondage by their parents.

The report, entitled “International Trafficking in Women to the United States: a Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery,” reveals not only the growth of slavery alongside staggering levels of wealth for those at the top, but a political and legal system which is indifferent to the problem.

The very fact that the report had to be leaked to reach the light of day is indicative of this indifference. The agency study was completed last November and circulated within the government. It is not classified, but has never been released. According to the Times, which published an account of the report on April 2, the newspaper was provided a copy by a government official “who wanted the report's findings publicized.”

“No one really knows what to do with it,” says a government official quoted by the Times. “I'm not sure people are really focusing on this.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/slav-a03.shtml

Thanks, Blue_Tires, for giving a damn.

[Turbineguy]

4. That's what conservatism is all about now

To loot the economy and get a heavily armed middle class to turn on each other to thin the herd.

[ShortnFiery]

9. Yes, and I'd only add Conservatism = Corporatism within BOTH parties. eom

[mstinamotorcity]

5. Well they have only themselves

to get their money from. They are already turning on each other.This will be survival of the fittest. The corporate powers that be want everyone to believe that they are the only way that people can make money or have a job. They want us dependent on them so that they can keep their power and control.Don't tell them its not working. Then we will have to deal with some more rhetoric bull s--t.

[laughingliberal]

7. Time to wake up, America! Rec. eom

[cali]

8. the crap about how working Americans have it worse than slaves did

is beyond appalling. Why not add to the "they got three squares, shelter and health care" that they had job security and got to sing all the live long day?

It's so fucked up to compare what slaves endured with what the American worker is going through.

Here's what slavery really was:

Families torn apart
no education
brutal physical treatment
no health care
poor living conditions
no autonomy whatsoever

and on and on.

[Octafish]

27. Slavery was evil and slaves lived a horrible fate. I'm saying ours is may be worse

Not only are we wage slaves, we may be heading toward extinction because of the actions and inactions of these warmongering corporations and their owners and operators.

ExxonMobil makes the point. The company cares for its bottom line more than the human beings whose lives they ruined during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in '89. Employing an army of lawyers, the company has been able to stall payment on the $5 billion judgment owed to the people of Alaska. In fact, they've made $23 billion in interest off that money owed the people harmed by their drunk captain and corporate negligence, an amount finally reduced to $500 million by the SCOTUS.

What's worse, the corporation has outlived many of the people they owe -- 6,000 of the suit's 32,000 plaintiffs have died. What is it when a company can use its resources to control government and courts if not evil?

Even more to the point: Big Oil funds the fund the climate change deniers and their multi-million propaganda network. I'm sure the bosses will be able to afford a private hideway where they can ride out the economic collapse preceding the ecological catastrophe that likely will kill off most of humanity that can not afford such, eh, luxuries.

From unending war to ecological collapse, these are our times, when we, as individuals, are increasingly unable to control our own destiny, let alone make a difference in the direction taken by the oligarchs that run the political economy and the national security state, the key determinants of the planet's health. Their system is not only most undemocratic, their way of life is leading us all to a fate worse than slavery, cali.

[dotymed]

30. Cali, That is accurate,

but, if the masses don't wake up, organize and take to the streets soon...that reality will re-emerge as a permanent condition or even worse. CEO's are by definition; sociopaths. Your apt description is already a reality for some countries. It is heading this way at an alarming rate.

on edit: those conditions are currently being endured by the homeless in America.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Possumpoint]

14. When Will People Wake Up?

In an economy built on debt, the winners are the investors and bankers receiving the interest on the debts. The rolling over of debt in most cases results in greater debts.

[Odin2005]

16. I like that cartoon!

That metaphor obviously goes back a long ways.

[BzaDem]

19. Your proposed solution (of Greece defaulting on its bonds) only works ONCE.

Once Greece defaults, it would be completely locked out of the international capital markets. So while it could pay its pension claims and ignore the banks ONCE, the next day it would be in the same situation. Except NO ONE would lend to it, and it would literally not have the money to pay ANY of its pension claims. It would be either forced to dramatically reduce spending or it would just default on its promises to the people, because it would not have ANY assistance from outside creditors.

You are basically advocating for a very fast drop in government spending by about 13.5% of its GDP, even if you don't realize what you are really advocating.

[Octafish]

21. Greece defaulting really, really bothers you.

What gives?

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8312066

Here's the story of who the Greeks are steamed at:

Greek Debt Crisis

How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt

By Beat Balzli
Der Spiegel
02/08/2010

Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou speaking at a conference in January.
Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country's already bloated deficit.

Greeks aren't very welcome in the Rue Alphones Weicker in Luxembourg. It's home to Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office. The number crunchers there are deeply annoyed with Athens. Investigative reports state that important data "cannot be confirmed" or has been requested but "not received."


Creative accounting took priority when it came to totting up government debt.Since 1999, the Maastricht rules threaten to slap hefty fines on euro member countries that exceed the budget deficit limit of three percent of gross domestic product. Total government debt mustn't exceed 60 percent.

The Greeks have never managed to stick to the 60 percent debt limit, and they only adhered to the three percent deficit ceiling with the help of blatant balance sheet cosmetics. One time, gigantic military expenditures were left out, and another time billions in hospital debt. After recalculating the figures, the experts at Eurostat consistently came up with the same results: In truth, the deficit each year has been far greater than the three percent limit. In 2009, it exploded to over 12 percent.

Now, though, it looks like the Greek figure jugglers have been even more brazen than was previously thought. "Around 2002 in particular, various investment banks offered complex financial products with which governments could push part of their liabilities into the future," one insider recalled, adding that Mediterranean countries had snapped up such products.

CONTINUED...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,676634,00.html

We should be steamed at Goldman Sachs, too.

PS: Please, don't put words in my mouth, BzaDem. One thing I believe is that bookkeepers for concentrated wealth are planning to screw over America's middle class for the sake of "sound" economic policy. What I advocate is a better way of doing business and a more democratic economic system.

[BzaDem]

26. Of course we should also be pissed at Goldman. But how does that change anything?

Goldman worked with Greece to hide the true extent of the debt. But that doesn't change how much debt there is today. It either is to be paid or it isn't.

You seem to be advocating that it not be paid (or not be paid in full). That's what you mean by saying that social expenses should take priority over due payments on the debt.

All I'm saying is that that solution only works once. If they do that solution, there will be no money to pay the social expenses the next time they are due. Because no one will lend to Greece.

A potential Greece default bothers me because it would plunge Greece into a huge recession/depression, since they would immediately have NO CHOICE but to cut social spending dramatically. A plan where they actually pay off the debt with international assistance would allow them more time to cut spending and raise taxes, and not produce such a horrible situation for Greek citizens. I'm sorry if explaining the situation as it exists instead of how you would like it to exist bothers you.

[Octafish]

31. There is a choice. Investigate Goldman Sachs and all their connected toadies in Government.

If criminal wrongdoing is discovered, prosecute.

For those interested in identifying the criminals:

Know your BFEE: Phil Gramm, the Meyer Lansky of the War Party, Set-Up the Biggest Bank Heist Ever.

And a lesson for those whose history glossed over the 80s and the then-largest transfer of wealth:

Know your BFEE: They Looted Your Nation’s S&Ls for Power and Profit

The government has used our money to bail the rich and powerful and the corporations they own several times in our recent history and now the taxpayers are supposed to acquiesce while the wealthiest collect interest on their underhanded dealings? Don't know about you, but that is flat-out wrong.

Instead of continuing to bail out the crooks, I advocate on behalf of the people of Greece and of the United States. Our standards of living should not be held liable for the greed of a corrupt class of warmongers and high finance con artists.

No, I'm not surprised Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Masters of the Universe continuing to do business as usual doesn't bother more people, especially those who consider themselves intelligent. Silence is how they get their crumbs.

[hack89]

32. That still won't pay Greece's bills. nt

[Octafish]

34. We need Jubillee.

Wrote about it a while back, before the Big Bailout:

We the People Need Jubilee: Lion's Share of the National Debt Incurred under GOP Pretzeldents

Wall Street got reset. What about the rest of us? Don't We the People deserve one, as well?

[amborin]

20. knr get ready for the deficit commission's pre-approved recommendations

[Rex]

23. But but but, capitalism beat communism! USA USA USA!

Rahrahrah! Why would my elected leaders/paymasters lie to me? They were appointed by God! :crazy: