(A version of the following was kindly posted by the New York Times Marc 1, 2009, as one of F. Rich's editorial comments. I appreciate the change with a few years ago, when only the bellicose plutocratic propaganda was allowed to make itself known.)
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PLUTOCRACY UNCHAINED, AN ONGOING NIGHTMARE:
Larry Summers is Obama's main economic adviser. Larry Summers, as assistant Treasury Secretary under Clinton, came out in 1998 against regulating Credit Default Swaps (CDS). He opposed regulation with extreme violence. Credit Default Swaps are insurance promises against the default of some bond insurer themselves issued in a non regulated way by financial entities. They are traded as if they represented something of value. In truth they have no value whatsoever, because there is no guarantee that those who claim that they would make good on the insurance could do so, since it's all unregulated and they have no provisions (thanks to Jabba the Hut, who did not want them regulated; please excuse the poetry). At some point the total market of CDS was 64 trillions (64,000 billions). As the housing market collapsed, so did the CDS. The banks have got to own trillions of them.
So now we are all chickens in the house, guarded by the fox, Summers and his assistant, Geithner, and the assistant of Geithner, from Goldman-Sachs. The foxes are in charge, and the world economy is exploding, just as a hen house explodes in a frenzy of blood and feathers when the foxes come inside. This is a terrible change, and the collapse of the world economy is unparalleled in its speed and ferocity (even relative to the 1930s). Something has to be done. What has to be done is very simple: the bank basic functions have to be disconnected from the bank holding companies and all the "bad assets", namely mostly those Credit Default Summers. Then the basic banks left by this purification by nationalization could extent enormous credit, and be sold again (simple computation shows that, for less than the money injected in AIG, one could flood the economy with at least four trillion dollars of credit, by purifying Citi and B of A). But they will not do it.
Why do Summers, Rubin and their Geithner want taxpayers to pay for CDS? Well, why not? If they can get away with it, is it not their definition of good?
Meanwhile, armed with the suspension of the short sale rule and 15% tax rates, the friends of the worthy trio above, and their class invested in hedge funds keep on selling short and making huge profits from the drop of the markets and the 401ks. Hedge funds are a form of investment exclusively for the richest, by law, the law of the land, the law of the rich, of course.
No detailed description was made on who profited from what exactly as hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars was distributed to the world's richest people. Obama seems to have little understanding of the entire subject. He repeats Summers' talking points (example: 'Sweden is a small country, hahaha"). To save the world economy there is no time, and RICO, The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act should be evoked. It is made for this sort of situation (bankruptcy, fraud, obstruction of justice, etc.) and looks for "patterns of behavior", not specific acts.
Those who let the world economic system crash will end with blood on their hands. Tragic the culpability they will bear.
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Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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