Real Change Depends on Stopping the Bailout Profiteers by Naomi Klein

[Joanne98]

To understand the meaning of the U.S. election results, it is worth looking back to the moment when everything changed for the Obama campaign. It was, without question, the moment when the economic crisis hit Wall Street.

Up to that point, things weren't looking all that good for Barack Obama. The Democratic National Convention barely delivered a bump, while the appointment of Sarah Palin seemed to have shifted the momentum decisively over to John McCain.

Then, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, followed by insurance giant AIG, then Lehman Brothers. It was in this moment of economic vertigo that Obama found a new language. With tremendous clarity, he turned his campaign into a referendum into the deregulation and trickle down policies that have dominated mainstream economic discourse since Ronald Reagan. He said his opponent represented more of the same while he stood for a new direction, one that would rebuild the economy from the ground up, rather than the top down. Obama stayed on this message for the rest of the campaign and, as we just saw, it worked.

The question is now whether Obama will have the courage to take the ideas that won him this election and turn them into policy. Or, alternately, whether he will use the financial crisis to rationalize a move to what pundits call "the middle" (if there is one thing this election has proved, it is that the real middle is far to the left of its previously advertised address). Predictably, Obama is already coming under enormous pressure to break his election promises, particularly those relating to raising taxes on the wealthy and imposing real environmental regulations on polluters. All day on the business networks, we hear that, in light of the economic crisis, corporations need lower taxes, and fewer regulations - in other words, more of the same.

The new president's only hope of resisting this campaign being waged by the elites is if the remarkable grassroots movement that carried him to victory can somehow stay energized, networked, mobilized - and most of all, critical. Now that the election has been won, this movement's new mission should be clear: loudly holding Obama to his campaign promises, and letting the Democrats know that there will be consequences for betrayal.

The first order of business - and one that cannot wait until inauguration - must be halting the robbery-in-progress known as the "economic bailout." I have spent the past month examining the loopholes and conflicts of interest embedded in the U.S. Treasury Department's plans. The results of that research can be found in a just published feature article in Rolling Stone, The Bailout Profiteers as well as my most recent Nation column, Bush's Final Pillage.

Both these pieces argue that the $700-billion "rescue plan" should be regarded as the Bush Administration's final heist. Not only does it transfer billions of dollars of public wealth into the hands of politically connected corporations (a Bush specialty), but it passes on such an enormous debt burden to the next administration that it will make real investments in green infrastructure and universal health care close to impossible. If this final looting is not stopped (and yes, there is still time), we can forget about Obama making good on the more progressive aspects of his campaign platform, let alone the hope that he will offer the country some kind of grand Green New Deal.

Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that terrible thefts have a habit of taking place during periods of dramatic political transition. When societies are changing quickly, the media and the people are naturally focused on big "P" politics - who gets the top appointments, what was said in the most recent speech. Meanwhile, safe from public scrutiny, far reaching pro-corporate policies are locked into place, dramatically restricting future possibilities for real change.

It's not too late to halt the robbery in progress, but it cannot wait until inauguration. Several great initiatives to shift the nature of the bailout are already underway, including bailoutmainstreet.com. I added my name to the "Call to Action: Time for a 21st Century Green America" and invite you to do the same.

Stopping the bailout profiteers is about more than money. It is about democracy. Specifically, it is about whether Americans will be able to afford the change they have just voted for so conclusively.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/06-11

[struggle4progress]

1. kick

:dem:

[Miss Authoritiva]

2. FYI: Here are the links...

Here are the links to The Bailout Profiteers and Bush’s Final Pillage.

[AdHocSolver]

3. Giving bailouts to failed corporations is as worthwhile as giving a blood transfusion to a corpse.

The corporate executives have already shown they will use our tax dollar bailouts to give themselves huge bonuses and buy out competitors.

This is exactly the OPPOSITE of what needs to be done to save jobs and middle class investment assets.

Mergers and buyouts mean more economic power in the grasp of fewer people, which means less competition.

Mergers and buyouts always translate into fewer jobs as so-called "duplication" is eliminated.

Less competition means LESS innovation as fewer people with GOOD ideas have less access to investment funds to develop and implement new technology.

Fewer large corporations controlling the economy means the same crooks who got us into this mess are given MORE leverage to extort even more money from the people ("We are so big that you can't let us fail.").

What course of action should the government take to help America?

What will help America? Create more competition in the private sector.

Increase the number of corporations in any field to encourage and enable innovation. More corporations will necessitate creating more jobs. Companies need their own computer systems, financial departments, personnel departments, marketing departments, research and development departments, and so forth. More independent companies means more jobs.

Instead of giving the corporate crooks bailout money to merge and eliminate jobs, make the bailout money contingent on corporations spinning off divisions and subsidiaries under different management. This will spread the power and lower the risk to the economy.

At the same time this is accomplished, the tax laws have to be changed to make it difficult to hide income in offshore "dummy" corporations. Additionally, tax and trade laws have to be changed to make it less profitable to offshore jobs that could be done here in the U.S.

The biggest economic problems this country faces is NOT from the subprime loans and CDS's or any of the other alphabet soup of financial deals that are in the news. The biggest economic problem is the huge foreign trade deficit and the loss of jobs.

Job losses mean reduced government income tax revenue which in turn becomes huge government deficits. Increasing the taxes on the wealthy will NOT be sufficient to stave off world-wide economic collapse, if the U.S. cannot repay its debts.

The foreign trade deficits mean that the U.S. has maxed out its credit cards at the same time it is losing its jobs.

What more can be said to get people to understand why we are in such an economic crisis.

Forget the rubbish spin from the economists, the pundits, the financial experts, and the rest of the so-called "experts". They either don't know what they are talking about, or they are purposely trying to mislead and confuse the public. If you want "proof" of this assertion, just look at the first things the corporations did with the current bailout money: give their executives fine bonuses.

If you can understand what is written here, then you have all the information you need to understand how we got to this crisis, and what needs to be done to fix the problems.