John McCain and Barack Obama now rage in much the same words about Wall Street "greed" and "corruption" as the fountains of failure - as if the core imperatives of the investment banking system did not dictate executive behavior. Finance capital's refusal to invest in productive, socially useful enterprise is rooted in the corporate capitalist necessity to realize ever-increasing rates of return. Ultimately, they must be bribed by the public sector to engage in any useful project. As parasites who produce nothing, they (quite logically) attempt to suck up and absorb every public dollar in sight, while constantly working to weaken the public sector's ability to perform its legitimate functions.
Why, then, should anyone be surprised when Goldman Sachs alumnus Henry Paulson demands the last drop of blood - the "last (trillion dollar) bullet" - from the American public, and dares to attach dictatorial terms to his acceptance of the money? It is the nature of the bankster beast to manipulate political and market conditions to achieve unfair advantage - and the nature of the multinational corporation to be devoid of national loyalties.
"Let us bet on our collective selves, rather than on the thieving bankers."
If We The People must bet our futures on schemes to revive productive economic activity, then let us bet on our collective selves, rather than on the thieving bankers who are, in any case, no more useful to society at this juncture than an unburied body. With the Federal Reserve now the lender and investor of last resort, progressives should welcome the people's technical ownership of mechanisms for growth, and fight to make The Fed responsive in fact to the development needs of the larger society. As Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has declared:
"This means that the people are becoming the owners of the primary instruments of U.S. capital and finance. This now means that the people have a say in how these instruments are to be used and what their priorities ought to be. The people should now have more say in how their tax dollars are spent and what the priorities of government and the public sector must be. We the people must now set our demands to ensure and promote the public good."
In place of the of the self-serving bankers' moribund capital formation mechanisms, why not "seize the time," as McKinney urges, to push for a public mega-development corporation, funded in amounts rivaling that which the banksters are attempting to steal. "The Federal Reserve should operate in the interests of the U.S. taxpayer and not the interests of the private, international bankers that it currently represents," said the former Georgia congresswoman. "This, of course means that the Federal Reserve...must undergo a fundamental ownership and mission change."
Let us break, fully and finally, with the rule of "Mad Finance and Fictitious Capital."
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Cross posted at the Black Agenda Report.
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