by Naomi Klein
In a moment of high panic in late September, the US Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed—a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice."
Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country's banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, "Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending—for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc.—is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used........
ENTIRE POST - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/14
Decade of the 1970's -
Sergio de Castro, Pinochet's 'Friedman Schooled' economics minister, said he could never have done it without Pinochet's iron fist backing him up. (Referring to the implementation of a brutal policy for 'Wiping the Slate Clean' in order to make way for the new religion of a U.S. sponsored, 'Free Market' ideology. The economists taught their students to look upon the population as a psychiatric patient, requiring 'Shock Treatment' in effort to cleanse it of its 'collective' cancer, simply because it - the population mindset - didn’t fit Friedman's free-market model.)
It was Nixon who would give the Friedman Chicago Boys and their professors something they had long dreamed of: a chance to prove that their capitalist utopia was more than a theory in a basement workshop – a shot at remaking a country from scratch. Democracy had been inhospitable to the Chicago Boys in Chile; dictatorship would prove an easier fit. – Klein
Chile’s coup, when it finally came, would feature three distinct forms of shock, a recipe that would be duplicated in neighboring countries and would reemerge, three decades later, in Iraq. The shock of the coup; financial shock; the other, Ewen Cameron’s shock, drug and sensory deprivation research, codified as torture techniques in the ‘Kubark’ manual and disseminated through extensive CIA training programs for Latin American police and military. – Klein
This is the same Free Market formula Reaganomics and Thatcherism, whole heartedly, imbued itself in. Amongst the Chicago Boy Institution’s professors included such luminaries of destruction as George Shultz, and Donald Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld describing Friedman and his colleagues “a cluster of geniuses.”
In 1985 John McCain visits Pinochet. McCain described the meeting with Pinochet “as friendly and at times warm, but noted that Pinochet does seem obsessed with the threat of communism.” Gee, I wonder who planted that bug into Pinochet’s psyche? Today, the commies have morphed into: Al Kaeda Everywhere, under the ubiquitous and pervasive - Global War on Terror. Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption.
In 1985 John McCain visits Pinochet. McCain described the meeting with Pinochet “as friendly and at times warm, but noted that Pinochet does seem obsessed with the threat of communism.” Gee, I wonder who planted that bug into Pinochet’s psyche? Today, the commies have morphed into: Al Kaeda Everywhere, under the ubiquitous and pervasive - Global War on Terror.
Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption.
Friedman's, Chicago Boys, during the decade of the 70's, had already proven their greed based markets worked in test beds such as Chile and Argentina, but only through the process of 'Cleaning the Slate' through Shock and Torture, where hundreds of thousands were 'disappeared', along with U.S. - CIA and Corporate complicity.
Friedman himself was forced to admit that his free-market ideology does not fit comfortably within democratically established Societies - which is why the 'CULTURAL SLATE MUST BE ERASED' to make way for the new free-market religion, a medicinal cleansing is required. In Friedman's world - the architect of Reaganomics - Democracy and Free-Markets are a contradiction in terms; diametrically opposed and at odds with each other. Its results: a small elite grow far wealthier while large portions of what had been the working class are discarded from the economy althgether and turned into surplus people.
What should be even more worrisome is that Friedman style, free-market ideology was sold to the Chinese. The Chicago Boys having deemed Democracies as inhospitable to their formula for quenching insatiable greed, China certainly would prove quite the opposite. Just look at the praise it received via the, so called, Olympics. Look where the free-market multi-nationals tend to find attraction and tend to gravitate towards - China and Dubai.
'Operation Iraqi Freedom' should be seen in its true light, for what it really is, a Neoconic cleansing, or 'clearing of the slate' in preparation for Iraqi Friedman!!
See: Negorponte - The Death Squad Ambassador
A lot of folks have criticized, questioning Obama's character for having rubbed shoulders with folks from the same institution from which Freidman launched his bloody counter-revolution against New Deal policies. But what people don't bother to check is that Obama is completely anti-Friedmanism. Having infiltrated the den of vipers, having discovered the enemy’s strategy, Barack of all peoples is the only one poised to expose them, or at least use their own tools against them for the greater good. I can still hear Barack's words, ringing in my ears, calling for transparency. Although Barack may have brushed shoulders with Friedman's school of financial thugs, does not make him one.
Friedman, along with, Nixon’s Secretary of State, Kissinger should be pointed out for what they are: Criminals wanted for murder! In fact, if Kissinger were to set foot in certain areas of South America, he would immediately be arrested as such and he knows it, thereby forcing him to utilize his 'Free Market Miles' frugally.
**STOP** and get a copy of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, read and re-read it while we await election day to arrive. Because, what Naomi brings to light within the pages of her expose, is precisely what WE are voting against in this election; decades of ruthless, predatory abuse of power, with greedy Corporatarch bottom-lines that are soaked with innocent blood, everywhere. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Naomi does an excellent job in removing the haystack, exposing the piercing needle hidden within and explains everything.
Video of Naomi Klein speaking at the University of Chicago, invited by anti-Freidman group against erecting monument to Freidman. Naomi says each time Obama criticizes the current failed economic policies, his ratings shoot up.
Naomi Klein: Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism
Have we met our enemy yet? Or, are we still unable to see the forest for the trees?
Proper education and sunlight are the BEST disinfectants!
Peace, Best Wishes and Hope
There he is, the sound of money in a wizened Texas drawl, the tired realist looking a bit like the John Huston character from “Chinatown” as he warns in national television ads that we should just listen here and do as he says.
And what the 80-year-old T. Boone Pickens says, in a $58 million campaign, is that we can’t drill our way to lower gas prices. By implication, anybody who tells you otherwise — including the fellow Texan he helped put in the White House — is a fraud.
This is a political parable for the ages: the guy who was behind one of the knockout punches to John Kerry four years ago is now doing Democrats the biggest favor of the election by calling Republicans on their phony energy campaign.
“Totally misleading” is the way Pickens describes Republican attempts to convince the public that if we just opened up all these forbidden areas to oil drilling then gas prices would fall. He’s not against new drilling, but he is honest enough to say it wouldn’t do anything.
Republicans are furious at their longtime benefactor. Senator John McCain is currently running an ad in which he directly blames Barack Obama for $4-a-gallon gas at the pump — as bogus a claim as anything yet made in 2008.
Then along comes Pickens, Texas oilman and billionaire corporate raider, overwhelming the McCain attack with a saturation message that has the added value of being true, as Henry Kissinger once said about another matter.
Pickens was a geologist before he found a deep pool of money, so when he says “the geology just isn’t there” to reduce oil imports through new drilling in offshore areas, he has some cred.
But, more importantly, Pickens is betting $10 billion in constructing what he says will be the world’s largest wind farm in the gusts of West Texas. If the mighty winds of the American midsection were harnessed, it could free up plentiful natural gas for vehicles — a relatively quick step away from foreign oil.
Would it enrich him further? Yes. But perhaps it’s not about money. In “Chinatown,” the old man played by Huston was asked by Detective Jake Gittes what more he could possibly buy at his age.
“The future, Mr. Gittes. The future.”
But before T. Boone poses for his statue, he has to answer to his past. Pickens was the moneybags, to the tune of $3 million, behind the Swift Boat attacks that made Senator Kerry’s honorable service in Vietnam sound like Rambo tangled up in lies. He even promised to pay $1 million to anyone who could challenge the veracity of the claims.
Carole: The US has to come up with long term policies that will benefit the people, the environment, etc. not short term solutions that will only benefits the multi-national corporations. As Naomi Klein also discussed in this article:
