Bankers Use Crisis to Strengthen Oligarchy

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Bankers Use Crisis to Strengthen Oligarchy
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
The Bush regime is throwing billions in public money at big banks so they can devour little banks. The result will be more institutions that are "too big to fail" - and dangers to all of society.
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"A small cabal of mega-bankers will have been empowered to act as "untouchables" - too big to fail."

The Democrats and their standard-bearer are co-enablers of the biggest single heist ever perpetrated on the United States public - second only to the 60-year-long military industrial shakedown that is a permanent feature of the American criminal landscape. Bailout Two - the "injection" of what will become trillions of public dollars into the nation's largest banks - is purposely designed to allow the bigger financial pirates to eat up the smaller ones, thus creating an even more condensed oligarchy of institutions that will be judged "too big to fail." Consequently, these banks' power to extort further infusions of the people's finite reservoir of wealth in the future, will become permanent.

According to published reports, part of the Bush regime's plan "is to drive consolidation" of the banking industry. Henry Paulson, whose title is Treasury Secretary but who is in fact acting as an agent for his former firm, Goldman Sachs, and other vectors of capitalist chaos, has been permitted to divert every available ounce of public wealth to creation of financial monopoly. It is a huge step in the erection of a fascist - let me repeat the word, because I do not use it lightly - a permanent fascist infrastructure of rule by the most rapacious, non-productive sector of capitalism.

"We can now see the outlines of a raw dictatorship of leaner and meaner, more aggressively ruthless Lords of Capital."

The Bush regime is determined to make these structural changes irreversible. They are betting that, even if the Democrats find the courage to demand a public presence in the banks that leach on the public purse, a small cabal of mega-bankers will have been empowered to act as "untouchables" - too big to fail, or even to effectively threaten. Even as late stage capitalism convulses in the throes of its own, now insurmountable contradictions, its grip on the American state apparatus and economy tightens. We can now see the outlines of a raw dictatorship of leaner and meaner, more aggressively ruthless Lords of Capital - a class personified by the bullying, blustering Henry Paulson.

This configuration of banks, subsidized with public dollars and directed by corporate strategists sometimes posing as public servants, will not hesitate to manipulate crises to its own benefit - and to wield its power to create chaos at will, as a weapon. This looming structural threat - in combination with the firmly embedded military-industrial extortionists - poses as grave a danger to society as the concentrated power of organized slaveholders, 150 years ago. Indeed, it is an even greater threat, since there is no significant organized opposition. Certainly, not from the Democratic Party and their congressional leader, Nancy Pelosi. The Democrats opened the door to trillions in gifts to Big Capital, while asking only $150 to $300 billion in economic assistance for the people. They have always settled - on the public's behalf - for a pitiful small slice of the people's own pie. In a crisis, the Democrats show their true calling. They are doormen for the rich.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com