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The Way the Monster Operates
By David Glenn Cox
I was watching Wall Street eat their young today when someone in the chat room started talking about one world government. I had to smile; I always smile when people talk foolishness like that. One world government would require one world currency and how would the speculators earn their daily millions if all the world used one currency?
We have this naïve notion that all monsters look like Godzilla and all fascists pound their fist on a lectern. That is a Hollywood fantasy and a creation of the twenty-four hour news feed because the real monsters wear three piece suits and put children to work in sewing factories after kissing their wives goodbye in the morning. Fascists don’t pound lecterns anymore, that’s passe. Instead they smile to the crowd and wave. They shout, “I’m one of you and together we will change the government!”
Then they do, but not for the better. The federal Minerals Management Service was a train wreck of an agency long before Barack Obama ever became President. Whether it was smoking dope and snorting coke with oil company officials while undercounting the amount of oil being taken, or allowing blow out protectors that had a forty percent track record of failure and had never been used at that depth before, that was the legacy of the MMS. These things are hardly state secrets and yet the new administration was in such a hot sweat to help their buddies in the oil industry that they signed off on a Bush-era environmental plan approved by the MMS for the entire Gulf of Mexico, not just one specific oil well.
It’s not one big monster that stomps down your cities but hundreds of small ones. Little monsters that play ball with big business so that when trace amounts of melamine show up in baby formula, the FDA is Johnny on the spot to tell the public that they believe it is safe.
This is a misperception of what government is supposed to do. Their job is to make rules to protect people from the abuses of capitalism. Instead they have an incestuous relationship and change the rules in midstream to protect the corporations and if babies get sick or oil wells blow up or cities fall into ruins, they don’t care a mote.
The recent events in Greece were an economic coup d’etat. You don’t need panzers and Stukas if you can cut off their money supply. One world government would eliminate that possibility. The Germans grudgingly agreed to make more loans to Greece while French bank stocks rose on the renewed security that they would paid in full for all that they were owed. The IMF, the world’s loan shark, will now oversee the finances of the Greek government. If it appears that the draconian social cuts and tax increases were not enough, they will simply add more.
In this country the Justice Department, in a series of indictments, is prosecuting the widespread practice of bid rigging in the municipal bond market. Cities, states and municipalities raise $400 billion annually through municipal bond offerings. During the three-year investigation the government has gathered over 700,000 tape recordings. Bank of America has turned state's evidence in a deal for immunity from prosecution. This investigation encompasses eighteen companies, almost every one of them a household banking name. Retired IRS head of field operations Charlie Anderson said, “It was so commonplace that people talked about it on the phones of their employers and ignored the fact that they were being recorded. This will go on for a long time and a lot of people will be indicted.”
One of the indicted bankers, Evan Zarefsky, said through his attorney, “The government continues to show that it simply doesn’t understand how this market operated.” This is a very true statement, but I think would be better phrased as that the Justice Department doesn’t understand that the market is in charge of the government. The bankers see their pillaging as a divine right and if taxpayers in West Virginia, Pennsylvania or California are saddled with extra debt or excessive fees, well, that’s just the way the monster operates.
That’s why the Senate compromise on the financial reform legislation is so important. Under the Dodd compromise, federal bank regulators can more easily preempt states that pass new laws governing financial products offered by national banks and thrifts. Dodd's original bill would have permitted states to pass such laws if a new consumer watchdog agency has not established similar rules.
Or in other words, the power is being taken from elected state officials and given to appointed federal regulators. Not to the watchdogs at the Justice Department or the IRS, but to the ones at the Treasury that allowed the bid rigging to go on in clear view of all. Here’s a bonus question: does anyone know who the US representative to the IMF is? Why, it's Tim Geithner. Anyone know who the deputy representative is? Ben Bernanke!
While the administration dismantles the MMS because of its cozy relationship with the oil industry, Congress is building a new financial version of the MMS. No fist pounding on the lectern, they are doing it to protect you. They fear you will become confused if you live in Ohio and California enacts a strict disclosure law on loan applications. See, they are trying to protect you. They are protecting you by turning you over to the tender mercies of the unelected who were appointed from the ranks of corporate America and who will return back to their waiting arms.
It all takes us back to the principle that if you can control the finances you can control the government. You don’t need tanks and planes to fight people who have money. They can usually be brought to their knees simply by taking their money away. After years of sanctions Iraq could not be brought to heel, so we fought an actual war only after the financial war failed. Afghanistan didn’t have any money to begin with but does have the three most important qualities of real estate, location, location, location.
The financial war with Iran goes on unabated and it really doesn’t matter what the Iranians do because the United States wants a full capitulation and nothing else will be acceptable. Ten years ago the US had only a small military presence in the region and today controls two countries after invasions with military power. We have added military bases all over the region to protect who? Wrong, not to protect Israel but to protect Saudi Arabia.
Iran is the regional adversary of Saudi Arabia. Any Iranian nuclear device is far more likely to be pointed at Riyadh than Tel Aviv. Saudi Arabia is ruled by pragmatic banker types who don’t give two hoots and a holler about Allah when it gets in the way of making profits. Like the Vatican it is a banking empire cloaked as a religious kingdom. The Iranians profess love and solidarity with their suffering Palestinian brothers but couldn’t drop a weapon on Israel without incinerating most of the Palestinians in the process. The Iranians are Persians and Saudis are Arabs and turning Riyadh into a cinder wouldn’t keep them up nights.
It’s all about geopolitical control of the region where two adversaries sit across a small body of water from each other. Both nations have fantastic wealth but one has a large population and a regionally strong military. The other has a small population and a token military force but has a powerful friend. One nation is our proxy, the other our adversary. The conflict isn’t about bombs, it's about banks, and it isn’t about religion, it's about money.
If the United States is able to dominate Iran it will have complete and unfettered control of the Persian Gulf. It will have eliminated all its adversaries in the region and only Iran stands in the way of that goal. From Tbilisi in the west to Islamabad in the east, and from Tehran in the north to Somalia in the south the US will have successfully walled off the Middle East from the rest of the world. Only Iran stands in the way; Iran is the last piece of the puzzle. Whoever controls the oil controls the economies and whoever controls the economies controls the world.
Do you see? That’s the way the monster operates; it doesn’t care about religion or Democracy. It is all about control and control is measured in money. Money is government and government is money. From your own life to the ends of the Earth you own no more freedom than the coins in your purse.
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