Bailout Lesson
Capital Crisis Will Wreck
Both Parties
By
Glen Ford
"The Democratic and
Republican Parties, creatures of capital, are decomposing in
full view."
01/010/09 "BAR"
--- In their role as
mercenaries in service of finance capital,
three-fifths of Democrats joined one-third of
Republicans in a (temporarily) failed heist of $700 billion
of the people's funds - a nest-egg the public needs to hold
onto to weather the unfolding collapse of the Lords of
Capital. In the aftermath of Monday's bloody siege, it was
difficult to tell who Wall Street guns-for-hire John McCain
and Barack Obama hated most: each other, or the citizens who
despite their outraged confusion had the presence of mind to
bar the doors to the national treasury.
Understandably disoriented
from having had to charge backwards - pretending to lead the
people while simultaneously assaulting them - Obama peered
across the field at the hastily-erected barricades that had
broken Hank Paulson's Charge. "I'm confident we're going to
get there," said the frustrated thief-enabler, "but it's
going to be rocky."
To paraphrase
Oscar Brown, Jr., "What you mean WE, Obama-man?"
The Illinois senator and his pretend-opponents in the other
business party just had their colluding asses kicked by the
most motley, disorganized crew imaginable: the American
public, who bombarded their legislators with threats of
retaliation in November if they bowed to Wall Street's
extortionist demands.
Never has
Republican-Democratic co-subservience to finance capital
been on such naked display. But then, "We the People" have
never before been witness to the terminal unraveling of
late-stage global finance capital. (See BAR, "Death
Rattles of a Criminal Class," September 24.) When the
New York Times features no less than three articles
declaring the nation's investment bankers ready for burial,
as did last Sunday's paper, it is time for the Democrats,
especially, to find another paymaster.
Black Caucus Split
Obama's party is wedded to
Wall Street. At the local level the Democrats have long been
the party of "developers" - the money bags who shape urban
policy to fit the needs of corporations. These gentrifiers
are the "Renaissance Men" that insist Black politicians earn
their campaign and graft payments by helping to expel their
own constituents from the cities, so as to make them more
congenial to business. Betrayal starts at home. So it's not
surprising to find Rep. Charles Rangel (NY), the
corporate-loving Chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee, among the 18 members of the Congressional Black
Caucus (CBC) to vote with the Bush-McCain-Obama Wall Street
Axis. Edolphus Towns (NY), Gregory Meeks (NY), and Artur
Davis (AL) are also in their element, reeking as they do of
corporate excretions. However, it is strange - and sad - to
see Maxine Waters (CA), Gwen Moore (WI) and other relatively
progressive members aligned with the rump end of the Black
Caucus.
Among the slim, 21-member
majority of the CBC that defied Speaker Nancy Pelosi's
edicts, one finds more curious company. Voting alongside
usually reliable progressives such as Barbara Lee (CA), John
Conyers (MI), Donna Edwards (MD) and Bobby Scott (VA), are
some of the Caucus's most rightwing members: William "Dollar
Bill" Jefferson (LA) and David Scott (GA), once described as
the "Worst
Black Congressman" in the House. Panic makes strange
bedfellows.
Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott
summed up the "No" position: "There's no point in spending
all this money on worthless assets" such as toxic mortgages.
Detroit's Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick said of the
Obama-McCain-Bush-Paulson plan, "This helps the banks in
their book of mortgages. It doesn't help the little person
who needs it."
"It is strange - and sad -
to see Maxine Waters (CA), Gwen Moore (WI) and other
relatively progressive members aligned with the rump end of
the Black Caucus."
These are eminently good
reasons to resist the bipartisan, flag-waving,
hyper-ventilating and increasingly ill-looking Wall Street
mob, now regrouping for another bum-rush of the Congress.
However, the anxious thieves are only a 12-vote switch away
from consummating the Greatest Theft Ever. Pelosi's wing of
the Business Party is confident they can assemble the
blandishments and threats to do the trick.
The Last Hold-up
The criminal-minded and
mortally wounded Lords of Capital believed, as Pam Martens
has written, that they could "loot and collapse a 200-year
old financial system and...be rewarded with a fresh $700
billion of public money to disperse among your cronies who
aided and abetted in the collapse."
Or, as Mike Whitney puts it:
"...the $700 billion is just
part of a massive ‘pump and dump' scheme engineered with the
tacit approval of the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
Once the banksters have offloaded their fraudulent
securities and crappy paper on Uncle Sam, they will do
whatever they need to do to pad the bottom line and drive
their stocks up. That means they will shovel capital into
hard assets, foreign currencies, gold, interest rate swaps,
carry trade swindles, and Swiss bank accounts. The notion
that they will recapitalize so they can provide loans to US
consumers and businesses in a slumping economy is a
pipedream."
Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson and his designated wrecking crew have but one
objective: theft. Their own world is doomed - "The system is
de-leveraging and nothing can stop it," says Whitney - so
they are pulling off one last, mega-heist before it sinks
beneath the waves.
The rest of us must fashion
new institutions to perform the societal tasks that were
purportedly the domain of the now-extinct investment
bankers: to gather large amounts of capital for projects of
social value - for example, a Marshall-type Plan for the
cities, a nationwide infrastructure makeover, and
fulfillment of the 70-year old federal commitment to provide
truly affordable housing for everyone. And of course, jobs,
jobs, jobs.
"We must fashion new
institutions to perform the societal tasks that were
purportedly the domain of the now-extinct investment
bankers."
We have many other uses for
that $700 billion - what Barack Obama called "our last
bullet," although intending to make it a gift to
mega-thieves - for instance, to provide relief to current
and future homeowner (and rental) victims of the housing
bubble that will take years to fully deflate, as prices (and
rents) decrease to levels consistent with wages and other
social factors.
In a perverse way, Henry
Paulson and his co-conspirators have done the public a great
favor. He has told us that, Yes, the federal government
can come up with $700-plus billion, in an instant, if
the health of the nation demands it. He has expanded the
fiscal scope of the domestic political conversation, so that
it may encompass projects of transformational size. Never
again can the corporate class speak of socially valuable
projects being so large as to "break the bank" or the
budget. Popular forces are now free to think large, too,
without being ridiculed from the corporate Right.
The demise of finance
capital's premiere institutions, and the brutal arrogance
with which their servants moved to strip the commonweal of
every squeezable drop of cash, has alerted vast sectors of
the citizenry to the reality of capitalism-in-crisis in ways
that no amount of Left agitation could have accomplished.
Technical public "ownership"
of previously "private" institutions has been thrust upon us
by the capitalists, themselves. But this is merely an
opening for the great debates and struggles that must
follow. Power does not devolve to "the people" by simple
virtue of majority shares in failing institutions or even
outright nationalization. And "the people" have no need of
institutions that serve no purpose but as creatures of
capital.
The second casualty of the
current crisis, after the collapse of the financial sector,
is surely the twin-party game of musical chairs that served
to legitimize the rule of capital. The obscenity of a
Democrat-Republican syndicate arrayed against the roaring,
raging sentiments of citizens of all self-described
political persuasions, cannot be erased from the collective
national memory - even if congressional party leaders
succeed in whipping their members into line, later this
week.
"The second casualty of
the current crisis is the twin-party game of musical
chairs."
When catastrophe hits,
radicals must be ready. Recent events have proven Cynthia
McKinney and Rosa Clemente to be amazingly prescient in
their belief that the Green Party can be - I emphasize
can be - a vehicle for presenting and popularizing a
truly transformational program for social change. (See
McKinney "The
Financial Crisis: Seize the Time!" BAR September 24.)
McKinney and Clemente always intended that the Green Party
become a nexus for the roiling social currents set in motion
by the inexorable decomposition of ruling class
institutions. The Democratic and Republican Parties,
creatures of capital, are decomposing in full view, as
witnessed by the events of this week. Too fragile to weather
real political storms, they will not survive the larger,
unfolding crisis of capital as twin hegemons. As the crisis
deepens, the parties will crack - at a pace dictated by the
increasing frequency of convulsions.
When we are confronted with
the surreal spectacle of John McCain and Barack Obama
attempting to destroy each other even as they rush to
deliver nearly a trillion dollars to the same master, while
the people scream at both of them to "Stop!" - we know that
"change" is coming. But not the kind the Democrats or
Republicans anticipate.
BAR executive editor
Glen Ford can be contacted at
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com This e-mail address is being protected
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