Surviving the economic recession

by Wendell W. Solomons

Several heads of state had drawn attention to the need for an international conference to keep the current recession from harming trade, travel and other ties and relationships essential to the nations of the world.

In consequence, in November 2008, US President George Bush invited twenty country representatives to Washington. At the G20 meeting he declared that reform must be based on.

Free Trade Free people

The host President succeeded in halting international agenda for reform.

His administration therefore continues with its own agenda that runs at odds with its slogans.

1. It can intervene in the US economy by bailing out banks

2. It can continue to get Europe and Japan to bail out US corporate citizens directly

3. It can intervene to transfer costs of bail outs to the entire world's population indirectly

4. It can continue stimulating private US defence industry through wars such as those of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan

5. It can send US citizens into loss of life in overseas combat that takes the lives of others.

Why indeed does the US put out slogans on non-intervention by governments?

In 'Transcend' journal of Sept. 18, 2003, elderly Johan Galtung, the Scandinavian also known as 'Professor of Peace Studies', attributed these words to a planner in the Pentagon:

"The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing".

At a talk that Johann Galtung gave in Sri Lanka in January 2007, he remarked that Britishers fancy the word "United." Galtung provided the examples "United Kingdom" and "Manchester United." That goes too for "United States".

The US sloganeering for Free Trade fits in the label "cultural assault" of the Pentagon planner. Speaking in more detail, the assault amounts to psychological warfare waged against other nations to place their citizens at odds with each other.

It emerged as a nominal religion blended with nominal economics in 1976. Surprised US journalists called it 'Voodoo Economics.' In the early phase the association with some sort of religion was detected because it had not overwhelmed media.

To seed disunity

The cultural assault intended to break down social harmony using megalomania of self-infinitisation. On the hidden side of the coin of 'Freedom of Choice' of the Monetarists was the trivialisation of society and one's neighbour. It was in this light that Margaret Thatcher as British PM was led to claim, "There's no such thing as society."

A nation so targeted would lose social harmony. The loss of social solidarity would make that nation submit to the menu of powerful corporate citizens. Friction in the targeted nation would endanger its cohesion. Opportunism in the work place would disrupt innovation and productivity. Facing hardship, the nation would be forced to the houses of finance capital to obtain loans and pay interest.

Fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist economics sold loans from the moneychangers. For themselves, the cynical promoters of this psychological assault formed an invincible cabal among themselves.

Alan Greenspan served as a part-time New York jazz player who joined the Saturday evening company that sank into soft green leather upholstery at Ayn Rand's New York apartment to dip into wine and conversation. In the fullness of time this saw Greenspan to the post of Chairman of the US Federal Reserve. Ayn Rand had first introduced Greenspan to President Nixon and a note in 'Salon' magazine observed:

Only in America could so much power and prestige be given to someone who was a major fan of Ayn Rand and her cult of "Objectivism," which she summed up as "enlightened selfishness..."

For Objectivists like Greenspan no price (if paid by others) is too much to stop inflation.

For example, he reportedly is a staunch atheist, but that did not stop him taking an oath on the Talmud (held by his aged Mum) to become chairman of Nixon's Council of Economic Advisors, while his prophetess Ayn Rand beamed away in the front row.

Another person writes a note on Great Communicator Ronald Reagan whose Presidency incepted in 1976 the worldwide broadcast of Zombie Economics, the religious and economic simplification:I'm starting to think politicians should use Ronald Reagan's strategy of rarely going to church personally but professing to be born again.

It's the only safe option.

With Voodoo Economics, corporate citizens such as Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan and Citibank became still more bloated as they towered over ordinary US citizens.

We find that Voodoo Economics promoted the financial corporates by removing the regulation that was intended to keep their activity from overwhelming the nation.

They could achieve de-regulation because they serve as key financiers of US Presidential candidates at election time. Both Republican and Democratic legislators must hear them out.

US citizens, over the years, have tended to step back on election day. This in effect chooses a scoop of ice cream; take your pick of vanilla or chocolate. Either of the two Presidential candidates may send young Americans into overseas battles. Is this the anticipated peace dividend after the end of the Cold War?

As we see today, a neoconservative militarism would supply the jingoism to keep Americans united in serving as cannon fodder. They have been going out willy-nilly during the last ten years mostly to help Anglo-American financial capital to keep petroleum on the side of the dollar and away from the Euro.

On March 28, 1999, Thomas Friedman, the editorial voice of the "New York Times" wrapped this up on the militarism:

"For globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is ... The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist - McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

In April 2005 the 'Asia Times' published this researcher's article "Modern economics' anti-business missile". I suggested that the psychological warfare would hit business in the US too. The model would lead opportunists to dry up the river of economic plenty. I explained with an analogy based on a Sinhala song:

Droplets of water

unite - A river is formed.

If that is possible, then this is also logical:

Droplets disperse

- The river runs dry.

Despite militarist jingoism, the megalomania of Voodoo Economics did come home to roost. It hit not only the Dot.Coms and Enron. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Droves of executives went into placing bets on future harvests of wheat, rice, sugar and other everyday essentials. The huge betting on futures influenced current prices in the world.

At the same time, the state military intervention by the US for Iraq's petroleum sent at-the-pump fuel prices in the US up € and in countries around the world. The increase of fuel costs drove up the prices of essentials still more.

The financial sector had gone in for a spree of consumerist advertising to lure US citizens to draw on credit cards at maximum rates of interest.

Credit card debt interacted with scams such as the shaky house mortgages schemes that had been dreamt up with the default on loans by borrowers to be paid for by US state intervention.

As jobs are lost around the world € as part and parcel of the meltdown we will see the sloganeering of "Free Markets" giving way to more state intervention. If reform is kept off the boards as happened at the G20 November meeting in Washington, intervention by the White House can only hope to stoke more resources of the population of the US and of the whole world into furnaces of doom.

Conflict of interest

US Secretary of Finance Henry Paulson says that he sees no one-shot solution.

Paulson was a longtime associate of private banker Goldman Sachs and he is in a bold and (now) traditional conflict of interest in a public finance post. Previously, President Bill Clinton's Robert Rubin was an associate of the same financial corporate. Lawrence Summers, Obama's recent choice for head of his White House economic council, served as advisor to the same vulture capitalist firm.

Ending such conflict of interest must consider the paramount union of private banks that is called the US Federal Reserve System. It issues US dollars on the orders of the Treasury Secretary, in the case of Paulson or Rubin epitomising insider trading.

The saga began across the Atlantic in 1946 when a Labour government decided to nationalise the Bank of England.

The banking clan in the 1-square-mile financial city of London drew back the Pound Sterling and promoted the US dollar instead as international currency because it was still private issue in the hands of its US subsidiaries.

Through the US Federal Reserve as proxy, a global casino using printed paper tokens could still be run by London's financiers.Newspaper 'USA TODAY' of Dec 5, 2006 provided this good news for London's parent financial clan

"While New York remains the world's largest urban economy, its wealth is founded on domestic business; experts say London has already stolen back its crown as the premier international financial market."

However, regaining the crown provided no more than Pyrrhic victory.One year after the gushing report on London, by December 2007 the recession began to seep into the UK, USA and the world.