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Banking Has Become Our State Religion
In 1922 Greek armies trying to conquer western Anatolia were routed by Turkey’s military leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks were uprooted from Ionian coastal areas.After this debacle, Greek officers took three former prime ministers, a general and two other politicians who had led the Turkish-Greek War and shot them. Greeks cheered.
Many Greeks today must be wishing to see similar punishment inflicted on their politicians who were responsible for the nation’s bankruptcy and staggering $500 billion debt.
For decades, Greece’s conservatives and Socialist parties alike bought votes by dishing out the very cushy, do-nothing government jobs, high pensions, and benefits that brought Greece to its knees. Call it state sponsored laziness.
In 2010, the second shoe of the 2008 US financial crisis hit Europe. Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain came under financial attack, showing the alarming degree to which uncontrolled, run amok banks and money men had poisoned Europe’s economic waters by speculation and outright gambling.
After intense debate, Greece’s EU partners and the International Monetary Fund just staved off Greece’s impending default on its maturing debt by a $165 billion loan. But Athens must soon make more huge payments. The EU aid package piles more debt onto Greece’s already mountainous debts – just as President Barack Obama is doing in the US.
The Papandreou government is praying the EU will come up with another $150 billion euros to keep Greece going for two more years. Germany and the EU’s wealthy northern members are furious at Greece and reluctant to pay for its profligacy.
But there is no way Greece can generate enough money by cost-cutting and asset sales to pay off its debts. Some form of default seems inevitable, as this column has been saying for over a year. The recent EU rescue package merely postpones default-day.
Calls for Greece to ditch the EU, restore the old drachma, then devalue it are mistaken. Greece manufacturers and exports little of high value. Feta, olives and tour packages won’t pay off Greece’s debts. Leaving the EU would collapse Greece’s banks and end mammoth EU agricultural aid.
Greece is using the same scare-tactics that the supposedly too-big-to-fail insolvent US banks employed in 2008: “if I go down, I’ll take everyone with me.”
In this case, it’s Europe’s big banks. Three big French banks, BNP, CréditAgricole, SociétéGénéral, hold large chunks of
Greece’s debt. If Greece defaults, goes the hue and cry, French, German, Swiss, and Belgian banks may crash.
Here we go again. Politicians have allowed the banking industry not only to grow larger than manufacturing, notably in the United States where the top five banks control 40% of all deposits, but to become so over-extended and risky they are a danger to itself and the public.
Bankers who invested in Greek debt or US subprime mortgages were greedy fools and should be fired, not rescued.
We hear them cry: “Lehman Brothers II!” And “we don’t know what murky financial deals link banks.”
Greece’s only viable solution is to renege on its debts, go bankrupt like Argentina did, and start afresh.
urope’s banks will no doubt be shaken, but they will survive the jolt, just as the US banking system survive 2008. Time for Europe’s banks to get these bad debts off their balance sheets. Rescue funds should be focused on Spain and Italy, if necessary.
It’s time for the bankers to pay for the mess their greed and recklessness created. Just this week we learned that the US government loaned $15 billion to Goldman Sachs during the 2008 crisis. Goldman should have been allowed to fail. The world would have better off without it.
No wonder Greeks are so angry. They must pay for the sins of their politicians and the bankers, whose bonus payments have reached an all-time high. The current EU rescue package for Greece is really about rescuing the banks, not Greek citizens. Just as the US government rescue saved and enriched Wall Street while punishing Main Street.
Finance is our new state religion. The power of the banks must be curbed and brought under control. How many more crises do we need before this lesson sinks in?
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26 Comments so far
Show Allread The Folklore of Capitalism.
written in 1937 by Thurman W. Arnold, it proposes that the priests of this religion are the lawyers.
thanks. notice how many in congress have law degrees? those who have talent to "speak the speech...trippingly over the tongue" at first were the "persuaders" we now call them "leaders" but they're just actors performing for a fee.
"according to your "faith" it is done unto you."
work hard to earn and save you MONEY, because MONEY is the safety net to secure a worry free retirement. (but...but...currency loses value with each new influx of fiat dollars, right?)
save MONEY when you buy cheap poor-quality goods. (soon you return to the discount house to save more MONEY to replace the crap)
better yet, keep the MONEY in a low, interest bearing account and let your credit card do the impulse shopping for you. (remember the high interest you pay translates to economic growth, and big brother love you for that)
MONEY equals happiness! (feeling sad? feeling bad? go shopping consume your way to riches. what greater joy than a brand new state-of-the-art, soon-to-be-obsolete toy?)
MONEY buys love!
MONEY makes you beautiful and protects your image against the ravages of time! (see the politicians, not a wrinkle, smooth expressionless visage-ageless and eternal)
"IN GOD WE TRUST!
PUT NO OTHER GOD BEFORE ME!"
"Time is money"
What's new? It has been the same news for years and if people are paying attention they know all of this and if not they don't but what does it matter? We the people have no power or no organizational power to get us all as one. This malfeasance has been going on for years and written about for years and nothing changes. There are enough of you writers that are telling us what really is going on, the corruption of governments who have been bought and paid for by banksters and multi national corporations but nothing changes. Maybe that is why it is so hard to find a good news story - they are saying the same thing i.e. wars, bombs, drones, killing, casino gambling by banksters, corrpution, repug thugs, democrat do nothings. and nothing changes.
The strategy of divide and conquer have worked well. United we Stand, Divided We Fall! Guess where we are going? Good Cop/Bad Cop in Washington has worked well. We have a President who is republican light and the people on the right are still calling in all kind of names and this President has lost his base but it doesn't really matter because if Wall Street and Multi National want him elected, he will be elected. If not, he won't.
Eric Margolis, excellent synopsis.
It is the rich (the bank managers and directors and the military armament makers) that use politicians to save or reward themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Why the American public accepts this state of affairs, probably through misnomers such as "the free market" and "threats to homeland security," highlights the failure of open political discourse within the US. Apparently, some topics are off limits for the media.
Despite his heritage as an old school "Cold Warrior", Margolis often puts together astute, succinct & bluntly honestly analysis on major policy. He avoids the Time Magazine style blather and says something:
"Goldman should have been allowed to fail. The world would have {been} better off without it."
Here! Here!
It is mind-boggling to see the extent that the modern state apparatus has been captured by the banking cabal in so many Western nations.
Casino capitalism in the U.S. and Western Europe dominates the landscape, and the state seems to function as a security & collection wing to ensure maximum profits for finance.
At least its heartening to see some of the people in Greece, Spain, & the UK restive and in the streets. They understand that they are to be thrown under the bus to guarantee banker bonuses.
And the people of Iceland really got it and refused to be stuck with the tab. (Even a right-wing loony site like the New American sounds kind of admiring....)
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/7086-iceland-voters-reject-bank-bailout-again
The USA? I think the plutocracy will muddle through by blaming Mexicans, grandmothers who refuse to dine on Alpo, abortion doctors, and greedy school teachers, etc. for the the ever shriveling Amerikan way of life.
If people and politicians did not get it in 2007-08 when Wall Street and the bankers drop kicked them in the gonads, they are probably never going to get it.
"Goldman should have been allowed to fail. The world would have {been} better off without it."
"Here! Here! "
~ ♦ ~
goldman did fail! the monetary economy has crashed! we stumble about in a state of shock and denial.
only the illusion remains yet a bit longer.
"Greece is using the same scare-tactics that the supposedly too-big-to-fail insolvent US banks employed in 2008: “if I go down, I’ll take everyone with me.”- Margolis
It's just a matter of time before it all comes tumbling down, anyway. Without job creation and good wages for all workers, there will be no global "economic recovery"!
I just watched a very good documentary by William Karel, on prime time TV no less, that actually included Howard Zinn! It is called "1929" and I can't imagine it being shown on US TV at any hour of the day or night. The parallels between then and now are unmistakable. Not much new information for those who know history but it does make it more immediate. Certainly, it was a welcome sight to see Americans willing to take to the streets and call general stirkes, including in San Francisco and in Minneapolis.
Maybe Israel can help out the Greeks in return for screwing the Palestinians.
Contrary to some of the commentary on Eric Margolis' article, I find Margolis conventional rather than thoughtful. Perhaps it is because of, "his heritage as an old school 'Cold Warrior,'" as Randy G notes. Margolis exhibits the standard "the system is sound" attitude invariably expressed by the "insiders." Thus we have,
"Greece’s only viable solution is to renege on its debts, go bankrupt like Argentina did, and start afresh.
[E]urope’s banks will no doubt be shaken, but they will survive the jolt, just as the US banking system survive 2008."
Indeed, "[E]urope’s banks will no doubt be shaken, but they will survive the jolt," and all will go on as it should. This while, "It’s time for the bankers to pay for the mess their greed and recklessness created," and pay because, "Finance is our new state religion. The power of the banks must be curbed and brought under control."
Now I'm confused. Will "[E]urope's banks survive the jolt" because Greece is insignificant, the banking system is so economically perfect it is unassailable, or because the state will bail out the banks because, "Finance is our new state religion?" In Margolis' muddled article, this is left unclear.
Additionally, why does Margolis focus solely on Greece? Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Italy, are all in trouble as well, as may be the U.S. if the debt ceiling is not raised. What would happen if, in order to avoid the onerous requirements of the IMF and European Central Bank, all (excepting the U.S. of course) defaulted in coordination at the same time? Would the world's "banks survive the jolt?"
Even focusing on Greece alone, confusing is the claim because European banks would NOT survive a Greek default, required is EU LOANS to the Greek government, which are to be repaid with INTEREST, while the Greek government radically REDUCES DEMAND for its products. What mad person concocted this insanity?
Oh, yeah, and the EU has informed the Greeks, along with this self-defeating madness, the Greeks will have to give up "some" sovereignty. I.e., let's throw in a bit of neo-colonialism to save the Greeks from defaulting and bringing down the European banks, which Margolis says can't happen. If it can't happen, then the Greeks should default. If it can happen, then the EU should fall all over itself to dole out billions, no strings attached.
One last consideration. How did all of this financial insecurity come into being in the first place? Don't tell me it is the profligacy of the financially insecure states. The wonderous German economy requires consumers to function, and much of that consumer base lies in the financially insecure EU countries. Something is rotten with the industrial (not capitalist, whatever that means) system, and no clear account has been provided.
Oh, yeah, we get Stiglitz and Krugman, but they keep operating within the confines of an economic "discipline" which clearly has nothing to do with reality. So, will someone please bring order to all this madness for me?
Thank you, Philandrel, your acutely analytical mind brings a lot to this forum.
Economics is NOT my forte, but I'll do my best to explain what I see operating. In the U.S., the same TYPE of mind that dreamt up the profits to be made from the failure of the S & L's, institutions that could loan out millions with mere pennies on the dollar in their private stashes, learned how to game other systems. Enron's games with energy allocation being the prime example.
These upscale criminal minds went to work on the U.S. housing market. The same UNIT that sold for $55,000 10 years prior, was artificially JUICED up to $150,000. And this ballooning effect was hardly restricted to prime real estate locations like NYC or Santa Barbara, California. It went everywhere, along with realtors normalizing these expense curves on national computerized systems (and data-bases). Wow! Suddenly there's all this new wealth! And all the credit machinations that can be loaned against it! Imagine the $ to be made... on just the interest alone! And what homeowner didn't feel grand thinking the home he paid $89,000 for was now "worth" $245,000! Instant wealth created! Presto! Magic!
So this housing bubble's illusory wealth, was ORCHESTRATED. Then the minds behind this engineered heist, began to bet against it. They helped to create deregulatory mandates that, under the pretext of making home ownership more available to minorities (the perfect class to blame, later! Alas, a crime with the perfect alibi already in place, and a racist right-wing echo chamber on board to promote it!) insured that persons without solid financial backgrounds, would get a piece of the American home ownership pie.
This scenario was then deemed very successful; after all, isn't this one of the pillars upon which Clinton's presidential claim to financial advances, was built?
So not only were these same types of actions sold to Europe, an insidious covert financial labyrinth was woven wherein the accountants, loan officers, and theoretical regulators ALL got into the game (with rare, if notable exceptions). It moves from criminal enterprise to normal business activity (not so different from torture accepted by both political parties, thus becoming a very sick NORM!)
Once the bankers had Obama by the balls (and he was probably chosen from the get-go, his loyalty unquestionable), in the same way that the war against Iraq was thrown into motion during the 911 response-frenzy, the fear of the global economy collapsing gave Obama the pretext to essentially hand ALL the loot over to the banks. The very ones who drummed up the whole elaborate heist. Heck, it's a far better job than the gang behind Ocean 11 or 12 ever dreamt up!
Given the US precedent, of the BANKS being bailed out... and hardly to the tune of a mere $700 billion. As many in this forum recognize, the amounts exceeded 4 trillion, nor is the game/heist over yet. Not only do we see it reverberating around the world, with Greece its latest casualty, the true nature of the U.S. economy is only being honestly faced by those at its bottom rungs. The rest are still hearing the music, and dancing away as the fiscal Titanic heads full speed ahead towards the iceberg. Why? Because NO regulation was put in place, all the wrong "Smartest Guys in the Room" remain irresponsibly and AMPLY rewarded, and the poor (along with workers) are in line to pick up the tab.
In other words, this WHOLE charade, I believe, was planned from beginning to end the way warriors plan wars. In this case, it involves the warriors of the financial world. And what a hit job they've enacted... a shot heard and felt round the world! And now, taken straight out of the Chicago School/Disaster Capitalism playbook, they aim to slice and dice the safety net, shame public employees, thwart the power of unions, and STEAL the social security & Medicare funds.
If this isn't criminal, it should be. Plutocracy is best understood as the CRIMINAL elements running a society, with morals, justice, law, and decency the "necessary casualties."
Just give them olives!
I could not agree more, Siouxrose.
What we are witnessing is the ruthless result of imperial capitalism: global kleptocracy-- "rule by thieves" -- calculated, sinister, ORGANIZED CRIME at an unimaginable scale.
In the US, the kleptocratic polyarchy of big business elites and their government minions have mapped out a plan over a period of years that seeks a totally deregulated world economy that undermines all democratic oversight or intervention into business practices. The kleptocracy is provided legitimacy by cloaking itself in superficial forms of democracy and using the rule of law as a tool to codify its nefarious activities.
Like you, I have long believed that this entire banking "disaster" and the ensuing bailouts were consciously planned as far back as the Clinton Administration, beginning with the dismantling (decriminalization) of decades-old legislation enacted to protect the public from predatory speculation. None of this was an accident.
GIOVANNA: Thank you for your response. I hold your views & expressed opinions in high regard. The powerful aspect of these long-term plans (like the PNAC), is that most American minds are TRAINED to the short attention span news-bites that result from long-term media exposure, or should I say conditioning. Therefore to posit that a heist like this had its preparations, I'd say going back to Reagan and the S & L scams... does not compute! Just as criminals go to prison to improve their skills, in my estimation, the biggest scams (S & L failures, Enron, Arthur Anderson's "style" of accounting, etc.) all were the "growth spurts" that led to this, The Big One.
BTW, my neice is getting married in San Diego in May (2012). If you have time, maybe we can meet for a coffee in La Jolla or San Diego.
Hi Siouxrose,
Thank you for the nice compliment; the feeling is mutual. You have an excellent grasp of how the political world functions and, though I don't always have time to reply to comments, I always enjoy reading yours and appreciate the significant attention to detail you give each of your posts. It's obvious you care deeply about the myriad political, economic, social, and environmental exigencies that place the future of our planet in peril. Your posts evince a highly sensitive, introspective, and intellectually gifted person with an acute awareness of subtleties that escape many people.
As you astutely note, the recent banking/real estate scam is only one of many planned crimes our ruling/criminal class and their political functionaries perpetrated against the rest of us. I think the second phase of this particular plan is to use the resulting economic meltdown as the justifying pretext to introduce Amerikans to the full brunt of neoliberal, "Shock Doctrine-type" "austerity" and "structural adjustments", such as ever-increasing cuts to, or in some cases the complete elimination of, cherished social programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
As you point out, PNAC (which includes 9/11 and the never-ending "War on Terror") and the S&L bailouts of the 1980s are other excellent examples. I would add the investor ("free-trade") agreements, such as NAFTA to the ever-expanding list.
In fact, ever since FDR implemented the New Deal, I think these elite bastards have been plotting how to take us all back to Upton Sinclair's Jungle. Only this time, they are making certain they control every aspect of the system including the White House, the legislature, the judiciary, the military, and the media to ensure that no pesky independent development of social democracy gets in the way of their pathological pursuit of profits ever again. The plan is as ingenious as it is diabolical.
It's frustrating to me how few people that I know personally actually "get" what's going on, which is why I find the comments portion of Common Dreams such a welcome respite from the mundane, conventional discussions regarding politics that I usually encounter.
I would very much enjoy meeting you for coffee when you visit San Diego for your niece's wedding next May. My email address is sdpages@cox.net. Please feel free to drop me a note any time.
Thank you so much, Giovanna. Your compliment is very meaningful to me! I will send you an email... right now CD has been loading on the articles, and I feel too compelled to comment than remain silent. However, I am very close to the "finish line" of a book that started in l988! I really wish to tie it up in the next 2 weeks... so I just want you to know that I agree with every insight you posted. And like you, I wish more people SAW what we did. It's very disappointing to me that most of my friends and family members either get their "news" from the "established" sources, and thus regard those agencies as more reliable than what they take as my "far-out" broadcasts of REAL events. Or, if they've gotten onto the phony side of the New Age bandwagon, they accuse such conversation as being "negative." That means they will NOT discuss the matter(s)! Sadly, it's a derivation of Barbara Bush's comment about not using her "beautiful mind" to contemplate the horrors that only bother other peoples' lives.
Tough time to be a truth teller... many of us probably feel as did Cassandra from myth.
"The power of the banks must be curbed and brought under control."
Indeed ...
We could hide our money under the mattress instead
you're welcome to use mine, eze'.
With distress I read Margolis' explanation of Greece's crisis: "For decades, Greece’s conservatives and Socialist parties alike bought votes by dishing out the very cushy, do-nothing government jobs, high pensions, and benefits that brought Greece to its knees. Call it state sponsored laziness."
This sounds too much like the public-servant-bashing that is now in vogue among state-level Republican parties. I have no basis for saying that there were no such corrupt practices, but they surely did not bring Greece to its knees all by themselves.
A contributing factor which was mentioned once in a AFP article and which I never saw again is Greece's military expenditures. "An arms race with neighbouring Turkey has cost Greece billions of euros."[1] As I pointed out in a comment to that article, this was very foolish because Greece, as a EU member, can call upon the entire EU for defence if it is attacked. Greece only needs enough armed force to enable it to likewise help defend its EU partners. Selling the excess won't bring in 150 billion euros, but evey little bit helps.
Further background on the Greece mess can be found in "Greece: Same Tragedy, Different Scripts" by Foreign Policy in Focus, posted on CD on July 15, 2010.
[1] Agence France-Presse, "Greece Warns Against Default as EU Finance Chiefs Meet", May 9, 2010 (http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/09-1)
Yes indeed, Bankers, Lawyers, Investors,and Politicians should be going to jail in large numbers. But there is more to the story than greed, theft, and incompetency. Greece is a good example. Do nothing jobs given to friends by the government. High pay with pensions and benefits producing nothing. As a young man in the US I worked construction (seventies). We worked very hard and our production was impressive, we made our employers a lot of money. I have been on some construction sites lately and these guys don't produce like we did. I don't think they are making their employers very much money. After high school some of my friends took high paying union jobs at GM. They bragged and laughed about how much money they made, and how they would sleep or play poker on the job. They intentionally did slow or inferior work and thought it was a hoot. When asked if they thought this might cause them to lose their jobs they said they could not be fired because they were in the union. These jobs no longer exist, I wonder why? At that time I was working for two brothers in their sixties building houses. They could not understand why young people my age were so lazy. We wanted to quit after only twelve hours of hard labor, and wanted Sundays off. Well the old boys taught me something, somebody has to do the work or it doesn't get done. A five man construction crew can not produce enough income to support an office full of folks who don't swing hammers. Here in Texas when you see road or utility work being done it's most often eight white rednecks standing around “ supervising Two Mexicans digging in a hole. Countries are often referred to as a ship of state. Think of the economy more like a giant wagon that we have to pull. Early on in the US everybody who could pull did. The only people riding in the wagon were those that could not pull. Soon some that could pull thought they should ride instead. I should ride because I'm the leader. I should ride I'm the leaders right hand man. Well then I should ride I'm the leaders wife. So as time went on more and more were riding and of course less and less were pulling. Today we have fat cats who have had themselves a free ride for generations, and the only thing their pulling is your leg. So I have a question for you average American who pulling your share of the load? Peace
iwonder:
I can truly relate to everything you just stated.
Inspection jobs I have been on always have A bunch of youngsters that never worked A hard day in their life. Since they were not "Certified", meaning they had not paid for the schooling or put in the thousands of hours for their certifications, management brought them in-Making more than A guy like me who had paid his "dues" by working my ass off through the years, being much older and much more knowledgeable...
These "Newbies" knew nothing about the business and yet were promoted over me...It was more cost effective to have these guys riding around in trucks and reporting back to management about "Production" because they knew absolutely nothing about the hands on, business end of the work...What A Fucked-Up, phony world we live in...
Banking Has Become Our State Religion--
All disciples of Mammon say "Amen"!
Materialism is more like it –with violence a close second.