COMRADE GREENSPAN, DIABOLICAL SUMMERS?

SHOWING HOW FAR TO THE EXTREME RIGHT SOME OF OBAMA'S ECONOMIC ADVISERS ARE, AND ALWAYS WERE.

It is pretty telling that even Senator Lindsey Graham, the economic adviser to McCain, and ex-Fed chief Greenspan, a renowned financial bubble artist, both conservatives and extreme partisans of fanatically free market logic, have now come in favor of temporary nationalizations of banks. It is even more telling that they have done so while Summers, the ex-Treasury Secretary of Clinton, and his ex-aide Geithner, have declared they were against nationalizations. This plainly exhibits the genealogy of responsibilities in the economic catastrophe: some of the people serving under Clinton were in the lead in causing it, and they persist in their ways. As the Roman proverb has it: “Errare Humanum Est, Perseverare Diabolicum” [To err is human, to persist is diabolical].

Right now, the USA is getting all the disadvantages imaginable to nationalizations, and none of the advantages. It baffles the mind that the most incompetent managers in the world were given huge amounts of national money, worth incomparably more than the companies they bled to death, to keep on doing what they were doing: enriching themselves and their kind, while transforming the economy into a crater. This Transfer of Assets to Rich Plutocrats (”TARP”) was made directly into their bank holding companies (not to the banks themselves).

There is strictly no argument against nationalizations. All what president Obama could come up with was that the USA has thousand of banks, and Sweden only “five” [and that makes him laugh, but it's a fiction: during its crisis, Sweden had hundreds of banks]. Also the USA has “different traditions and cultures” (apparently the typically American culture is that of gigantic transfers of money from the poor to the rich). Right now what we have is the height of irresponsibility of a national donation to those who are the main authors of the disaster, while leaving them in place to cause further damage, which they have been doing plenty of, by keeping on doing what they do best. Since the money went to the bank holding companies they made mergers and acquisitions (of the insolvent by the insolvent, using taxpayers money, they, and their friends and lawyers took handsome cuts of the money as it passed by), they gave themselves and their employees, high salaries, bonuses, etc. The crucial functions of the economy were mostly ignored. The economy has been faltering, and “generational theft” occurred (as McCain put it). Why just “generational”?

The stimulus and the housing plans of the Obama administration are underwhelming. Worse: the Obama administration is wasting time delaying the unavoidable nationalization of many banks, irreversibly damaging the economy and markets in the process. Summers once again shows his true nature, and the price is immense.

The Romans were probably right. Diabolicum.

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com