Bail-out or lock-out?

We are daily reminded by the Obama administration of the vast sums of money that are being concocted to ‘stimulate’ the American economy and at the same time be used to invest in social programmes, education, housing, health and social security.

But the reality is going to be quite different. The way in which the bail-out moneys are being deployed spells large not the stimulation of the economy but the total stultification of it.

Warning signs soon emerged after Obama’s election as president when he immediately took steps to surround himself with Wall Street cronies. Clearly, representatives for the leading financial institutions are ultimately in control in the White House and that bodes ill for the American people.

In this month’s Nexus magazine, Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Globalization in Montreal, Canada, clearly and precisely illustrates the stark truth of the intended game play and how the current financial crisis has been carefully designed so that the sole benefactors are the central banks, defence contractors and oil conglomerates, in other words the controlling élite.

In the final days of the Bush administration the full, and publicly undisclosed cost of the bank rescue programme was estimated at a colossal $8.5 trillion or just about 60% of the gross federal debt of $14.078 trillion. Since then Obama has added another $750 billion.

That $8.5 trillion has come from the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Authority. The Treasury’s contribution is classed as government expenditure and must be met through taxation and the shedding of its public debt. But can the US government achieve this?

The current budget deficit is the highest in US history, while interest rates are at their lowest. This means that US-denominated government bonds and Treasury bills are stymied. Who in their right mind would now want to invest in US government debt, itself enormous and offering barely any interest?

Without income from US denominated debt instruments, how does the Obama administration hope to combat the budget deficit and therefore roll out a public spending programme? It can’t. The only way the budget deficit can be met is by drastically reducing public services and selling them off to the private sector - that’s those same organisations that have been the favoured beneficiaries of the bail-out money! This is nothing other than a corporate takeover, or privatisation of the US by stealth, a puppet government manipulated by banks and corporations - corporate fascism.


Irony

Chossudovsky points out that the bitter irony of the whole scam is that “the recipients of the bailout under Bush and Obama’s $750 billion aid to financial institutions are the creditors of the federal government. The Wall Street banks are the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt; although they only hold a portion of the debt, they nevertheless trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments worldwide. They act as creditors of the US state. They evaluate the creditworthiness of the US government. They rank the public debt through Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. They control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board (wholly owned by the banks and as much federal as Federal Express) and the US Congress. They oversee and dictate fiscal and monetary policy, ensuring that the state acts in their interest”.

The US puppet government is not governing for the benefit of the people but for that of the banks by the banks. The government is in part financing its own indebtedness, the money granted to the banks is financed by those very same banks in a vicious cycle and is forever beholden to them, much in the same way as so many third world countries are beholden to those same banks through IMF loans.

With that power, the banks can dictate the terms. They can, as they do all the time in those same third world countries, dictate the privatisation of public services and take over of public infrastructure - roads, sewerage, water facilities etc etc, and impose the fiscal responsibility of the ‘government’. Obama can talk all he likes about the appropriation of funds into public services, the truth is the federal government does not control monetary policy. Period!


The black hole

Of the trillions sanctioned in bail-outs at the banks’ behest, following the deliberately engineered implosion of the financial system principally through the derivatives scam, little or none will find its way back to the hard-pressed ordinary working man and woman. The money is being accumulated by the banks and transfered into hedge funds which in turn are channelled into the acquisition of real assets, infrastructure, other financial institutions - in fact a gradual accumulation of not only the US’s assets but those of the world - while robbing individual's wealth through a plethora of new planned taxes like the global carbon tax, the stealing of pension funds etc etc.

This is nothing more than outright financial theft on a grand and global scale and the implications for Americans and those around the world are terrifying. Mass bankruptcies, wholesale unemployment, food shortages and deprivation on a massive scale as the common wealth is hoovered up by these iniquitous banking institutions, themselves run by the élite.

The only solution to stop this wholesale looting in its tracks is the need for a rapid awareness among all as to what is going on, then holding to account and bringing to justice these ‘élite’ robber barons and their vile scheme, the complete disestablishment of banks’ powers over governments and the re-establishment of government by the people for the people, with a banking system based on tangible assets - not a fiat system - for the benefit of re-building vibrant economies to the common good.

Until that goal is acheived we will all fall into penury with the global banking élite offering us their one and only solution, acquiescence to their corporate, fascist agenda and the new dark age that will follow under their dictatorship.