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Sucking Up to the Bankers: A Bipartisan Lovefest
This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them. Yet both of our leading presidential candidates are scrambling to enlist not only the big-dollar contributions but, more frighteningly, the "expertise" of the very folks who advocated the financial industry deregulations at the heart of this meltdown.
Republican candidate John McCain even appointed as his campaign co-chairman Phil Gramm, who went from being chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, where he sponsored disastrous legislation that empowered the banking bandits, to becoming one of them at UBS Warburg. Gramm was forced to resign from McCain's campaign only after he went public with his contempt for the financial concerns of ordinary Americans, calling them "whiners" and perpetrators of a "mental recession."
But Gramm and the Republicans couldn't have done it without the support of leading Democrats. The most egregious of Gramm's legislative favors to the financiers took the form of legislation named in part after him--the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law only after then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin prevailed upon President Clinton to sign the bill. The bill's immediate major effect was to legitimize the long-sought merger between Citibank and insurance giant Travelers. Rubin's critical support for the bill was rewarded with an appointment, within days of its passage, to a top job at Citibank (later Citigroup) paying more than $15 million a year.
That is the same Rubin with whom Democratic candidate Barack Obama met, along with other influential advisers, on Tuesday to figure out what to do about the sorry state of our economy. But what in the world did he expect to learn from Rubin? And why did he appoint Rubin's protégé, Jason Furman, who ran the Rubin-funded Hamilton Project, to be the Obama campaign's economic director? Hopefully, during their encounter Tuesday, Rubin offered himself as a contrite model of everything that the candidate of change needs to change.
After all, Goldman Sachs, where Rubin spent 25 years of his business career before entering the Clinton administration, has been one of the prime corporate villains in the financial shenanigans that led to the subprime mortgage scandal. As co-chairman of the firm, surely he had knowledge of the financial hanky-panky that would prove so disastrous down the road. Indeed, as Treasury secretary, he favored an extension of the deregulation that enabled this explosion of banking avarice. Not surprisingly, the current Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, also previously headed Goldman.
When Rubin assumed a top position at Citibank after his stint at the Treasury, he was not above influencing his former employees in the government. In one notorious instance during the fall of 2001, when Enron was going down the tubes Rubin telephoned a Treasury undersecretary and asked him to consider intervening with credit-rating agencies to hold off downgrading Enron's ratings. When the story was leaked, some media accounts noted the possibility of a conflict of interest because Enron owed Citibank $750 million, which it could not pay if bankrupt.
Despite his skills and his vaunted position as Citibank's chairman, Rubin was not spared the disastrous consequences of Citibank's own wild financial manipulations, which, if anything, exceeded those of Enron. Tens of billions in bad mortgage and credit card debt placed the bank at the forefront of the current economic crisis, and so it is weird that Obama would now turn to Rubin for advice.
It's even weirder that the presumptive Democratic nominee would pick Rubin's man Furman as his campaign economic director at a time when cleaning up the mess left by the bankers is the highest priority. Furman hardly distinguished himself four years ago in that role in John Kerry's failed presidential campaign, with its muffled economic message that could not be blamed on the candidate's stiff style alone.
The bigger problem is that folks such as Rubin and Furman, perhaps best known as an economist for his bold but woefully misguided defense of the Wal-Mart business model, clearly do not feel the pain of the voters who are losing their homes.
But then again, why should Rubin, or Gramm on the Republican side, be expected to care when he has made so many millions off the suffering of those voters? Not good at a time when we need a presidential candidate who sticks it to the bankers instead of sucking up to them.
Robert Scheer is author of a new book, "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America."
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THE FLOGGING WILL CONTINUE UNTILL MORALE IMPOVES
If you'd like to see who Obama's biggest contributors are here's the list...
You can get the same for all the candidates at Open Secrets.org
Most disturbing is that Goldman Sachs is the largest of those who bundled funds for Obama and they are at the top of those manipulating the Commodities and Futures market driving up the price of Oil..also Morgan Stanley which is on the list here, as well as UBS which is responsible for the Sub Prime crisis..
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00009638
I hope Huffington post allows this posted...
Goldman Sachs employees' bundled contributions are $627,730. This means that 200-300 employees and their families chose to donate. In the realm of the hundreds of millions given to the Obama campaign, this is not a significant amount.
Glad to know that Huffpo would actually post some unbiased news, that puts Obama in the same light as McCain. Too bad Americans wouldnt wake up and snap out of the mesmorized state they were in during the primaries and listen to Ron Paul.
Ron Pauls's a kook.
The Republicans and Democrats are awesomely super cool, and the only way to go.
I'm for Change with Experience and whatnot.
Wall Street is a benevolent shepherd.
Be happy with the clover you get to eat.
Knife? What knife?
This is a great article. But I just want to throw up. We get screwed again. I for one am tired of it and I have no idea why most of the other people of this cournty aren't. They are led around like sheep and do what they are told and get poorer and poorer every day and can't understand why. Maybe its because our congress is full of millionaires and lawyers. The common man doesn't have a chance. The only thing we can hope is that we can keep our heads above water and don't get screwed too much. I really feel sorry for our grand and great grand children. We are becomming a third world work force thanks to big business and the MIC. Thats the way they want it.
I am puking beside you brother or sister. Why would any politician listen to these dishonest thieves is beyond me.
And it is worse than we imagine. For not only do the criminals own our politicians- all parties, both sides - and control the banks (non-federal reserve who's owners rake in trillions a year from 100% of your income tax to pay back loans backed by air) they also control our education system, our medical system, and our alphabet soup agencies. That is just the short list. Americans must start researching and studying history. Because of the internet, we now have information available to us that wans't available in the past. Like who started all the wars of this century, who funded both sides, and how the robber barons just merely went underground. How, at the top, the world is just a big chess game for the puppet masters - using our tax dollars and blood to fight their created wars. Please, do the research, take the nauseating gut punch of this reality, and then start talking to your neighbors. Do it for your kids.
Politicians are politicians, dear Sir. Like Willie Sutton, they know where the money is. Why do you think they should not pursue it?
The biggest "conspiracy theory" afloat is that the international bankers who control the world economy want to dominate the globalized economy through central banking. Folks, this is NOT a "conspiracy theory." Google "Henry C. K. Liu," for example, about how the world is being taken to the cleaners by a financial elite that controls the global banking system, therefore, controls the creation and allocation of money, credit and capital for its own enrichment, at the expense of developing nations and now the former middle class, whose pay has been stagnating since the Seventies, while being taxed invisibly through inflation. If you're not up on economics enough to understand Liu, do a search on Google Video for "Money Masters." Open your eyes to the shell game.
Obama appers to be playing politics as usual--the art of the possible. However, it appears that the current situation may have slipped out ot the control of the controlling interests. They seem to be scrambling for bail-outs that may be too late. it's ironic that all these experts blame the crisis on the greedy homeowner when a closer reading of the situation makes it clear that bundling up all these mortgages and selling them off was just another cute little scheme to pass the risk and collect more money.
I have read that some judges involved in the foreclosure process have become sympathetic to homeowners. Most banks appear to have no intention of voluntarily working with borrowers to re-structure loans when homes are "upside" down in terms of value. The new housing bill appears to be a smoke screen that won't really protect most homeowners while giving banks a way out of their riskiest debts. Hopefully, a few good lawyers will step forward to help the homeowners save their homes. Fighting foreclosures in court will tie up the process-- think of the 60"s sit-ins as an example. The banks might be a little more receptive to restructuring mortgages with the attendant bad press and solidarity of home owners. Maybe Obama and other politicians will smell a change in the air. We have to try to do something or else we will be lambs led to the slaughter.
Will be led to the slaughter? Please use the present tense 'are'. Thank you.
Reagonomic capitalists are in a quandary. They defined any government activity to more equitably distribute wealth and ensure that it is used in a socially responsible manner as “bad”, as in “socialism”. “Unfettered” and unmanaged capitalism would supposedly lead to the best of all possible worlds. Taxation to benefit the lower classes, or regulation to control the ill effects of “unfettered” capitalism was denounced as bad policy. Regressive taxation*, subsidies to corporations, giveaways of public land and resources, corporate immunity for social costs, unnecessary wars to control resources, lucrative military contracts, privatizing for profit formerly non-profit government functions, destructive trade treaties, and all such things were falsely defined not for what they really are, forms of subsidy and wealth redistribution, but as “freeing up” the markets. And any massive redistribution of wealth and power upward, not to worry, that couldn't possibly affect the operation of democracy, because it all trickles down.
Now, the financial crisis has led to such a bald bailout subsidy that even die-hard “capitalists” cannot deny it. So, arguments are made to “save the system”, that it is actually a bailout for homeowners, done at the behest of our “socialist” government which won’t allow the “free market” to correct itself.
So sad, presumably we all should now redouble our fight against liberals and “socialism“.
*(regressive - Using social security tax receipts for the general fund, local real estate and sales taxes, “borrowing” with interest to be paid by future generations, etc.)
At the helm of the ship of state is the Wall Street shysters and the MIC. Naturally, the bankers now control this country. Ever since 1913, the Fed has installed itself based on a crisis of the bankers own making. But we have a democracy which means that when those with money figure out how to buy votes through the corporate media for voters and through lobbying for the Congress, money triumphs over all else in a democracy. Only by conflating capitalism with democracy - which are two somewhat different concepts according to the dictionary - can this occur.
The debate about allowing the bankers to control the country goes back to the founding of our country. In short, they won and we lost. Thanks, Bob, for pointing this out.
Obama will not change this but Kucinich or Ron Paul would have. Obama is controlled by Wall Street and increasingly the MIC. Fooled again. Shame on us. I never believed in "change we can believe in." Therefore, I have never sent Obama a single penny. The worst of two evils is McCain but an Obama victory will not translate into change, just preservation of the staus quo.
The Libertarians are the ones who are on point with this issue. they go apoplectic at thew mention of the FED.
http://tobefree.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/andre-eggelletion-federal-reserve-causing-economic-failure/
As long as we allow our Congress to be populated b millionaires, we'llhave this problem.
To millionaires, a banker is different animal than they are to you and me.
THIS is not a sophisticated crime, they print money out of thin air, and LOAN it to OUR Government....and there is NO Guarantee they won't just keep printing it and lower the value of the original loan.............IT IS BEGGING FOR BUGGERY to allow this.
Excellent piece Mr. Scheer. And an excellent thread also. Its good to know there are people out there who know the truth.
Excellent post, Mr. Scheer,
Hopefully (however unlikely), your hammering away at the facts will offset the nonsense being popularized by the big media.
Some of the nonsense I refer to is:
(a) the bailout is not "fascism" nor "corporatism", but government "socialism" ( a new Orwellian definition such that "socialism" no longer means aiming for a more equitable distribution of wealth), and the "solution" is therefore to give "free market capitalism" more "freedom".
(b) the bailout is being done to help "homeowners", not investment firms. ( Of course, if that were really true, a government freeze on resetting interest rates would do the trick without public funds.)
(c) the "problem" is not corruption and greed from the top, but "stupid" homeowners who allowed themselves to be "irrationally exuberated" by real estate con artists.
Thank you Mr. Scheer, as always, you cut trought the BS. These guys just don't get it(or maybe they do), they are slowly destroying this country.
Quote:
"Despite his skills and his vaunted position as Citibank's chairman, Rubin was not spared the disastrous consequences of Citibank's own wild financial manipulations, which, if anything, exceeded those of Enron. Tens of billions in bad mortgage and credit card debt placed the bank at the forefront of the current economic crisis, and so it is weird that Obama would now turn to Rubin for advice."
And we are expected to be surprised? The neo-liberal 'washington concensus', which trancends the political spectrum, is completely shielded from public scrutiny. It doesnt matter if things go sour, nobody of influence (press or politics) will criticise it with the level of criticism it deserves. Its agenda just marches on regardless.
The washington concensus will bleed the people dry, all around the world. a job it is performing well. it will be the worst of socialism for the majority and the best of capitalism for the elite 1% minority.
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