Bailout Lesson: Capital Crisis Will Wreck Both Parties
by BAR executive editor
Glen Ford
"The Democratic and Republican Parties, creatures of
capital, are decomposing in full view."
In their role as mercenaries in service of finance capital, three-fifths of Democrats
joined one-third of Republicans in a (temporarily) failed heist of $700 billion
of the people's funds - a nest-egg the public needs to hold onto to weather the
unfolding collapse of the Lords of Capital. In the aftermath of Monday's bloody
siege, it was difficult to tell who Wall Street guns-for-hire John McCain and
Barack Obama hated most: each other, or the citizens who despite their outraged
confusion had the presence of mind to bar the doors to the national treasury.
Understandably
disoriented from having had to charge backwards - pretending to lead the people
while simultaneously assaulting them - Obama peered across the field at the
hastily-erected barricades that had broken Hank Paulson's Charge. "I'm confident we're going to get there,"
said the frustrated thief-enabler, "but it's going to be rocky."
To
paraphrase Oscar
Brown, Jr., "What you mean WE, Obama-man?" The Illinois senator and
his pretend-opponents in the other business party just had their colluding
asses kicked by the most motley, disorganized crew imaginable: the American
public, who bombarded their legislators with threats of retaliation in November
if they bowed to Wall Street's extortionist demands.
Never has
Republican-Democratic co-subservience to finance capital been on such naked
display. But then, "We the People" have never before been witness to the
terminal unraveling of late-stage global finance capital. (See BAR, "Death
Rattles of a Criminal Class," September 24.) When the New York Times
features no less than three articles declaring the nation's investment bankers
ready for burial, as did last Sunday's paper, it is time for the Democrats,
especially, to find another paymaster.
Black Caucus Split
Obama's
party is wedded to Wall Street. At the local level the Democrats have long been
the party of "developers" - the money bags who shape urban policy to fit the
needs of corporations. These gentrifiers are the "Renaissance Men" that insist
Black politicians earn their campaign and graft payments by helping to expel
their own constituents from the cities, so as to make them more congenial to
business. Betrayal starts at home. So
it's not surprising to find Rep. Charles Rangel (NY), the corporate-loving
Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, among the 18 members of the
Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to vote with the Bush-McCain-Obama Wall Street
Axis. Edolphus Towns (NY), Gregory Meeks (NY), and Artur Davis (AL) are also in
their element, reeking as they do of corporate excretions. However, it is
strange - and sad - to see Maxine Waters (CA), Gwen Moore (WI) and other
relatively progressive members aligned with the rump end of the Black Caucus.
Among the
slim, 21-member majority of the CBC that defied Speaker Nancy Pelosi's edicts,
one finds more curious company. Voting alongside usually reliable progressives
such as Barbara Lee (CA), John Conyers (MI), Donna Edwards (MD) and Bobby Scott
(VA), are some of the Caucus's most rightwing members: William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson
(LA) and David Scott (GA), once described as the "Worst Black
Congressman" in the House. Panic makes strange bedfellows.
Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott summed up the "No" position:
"There's no point in spending all this money on worthless assets" such as toxic
mortgages. Detroit's Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick said of the
Obama-McCain-Bush-Paulson plan, "This helps the banks in their book of
mortgages. It doesn't help the little person who needs it."
"It
is strange - and sad - to see Maxine Waters (CA), Gwen Moore (WI) and other
relatively progressive members aligned with the rump end of the Black Caucus."
These are eminently good reasons to resist the bipartisan,
flag-waving, hyper-ventilating and increasingly ill-looking Wall Street mob,
now regrouping for another bum-rush of the Congress. However, the anxious
thieves are only a 12-vote switch away from consummating the Greatest Theft
Ever. Pelosi's wing of the Business Party is confident they can assemble the
blandishments and threats to do the trick.
The Last Hold-up
The criminal-minded and mortally wounded Lords of Capital
believed, as Pam Martens has written, that they could "loot and collapse a 200-year old
financial system and...be rewarded with a fresh $700 billion of public money to
disperse among your cronies who aided and abetted in the collapse."
Or, as Mike
Whitney puts it:
"...the $700
billion is just part of a massive ‘pump and dump' scheme engineered with the
tacit approval of the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Once the banksters
have offloaded their fraudulent securities and crappy paper on Uncle Sam, they
will do whatever they need to do to pad the bottom line and drive their stocks
up. That means they will shovel capital into hard assets, foreign currencies,
gold, interest rate swaps, carry trade swindles, and Swiss bank accounts. The
notion that they will recapitalize so they can provide loans to US consumers
and businesses in a slumping economy is a pipedream."
Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson and his designated wrecking crew have but one
objective: theft. Their own world is doomed - "The system is de-leveraging and
nothing can stop it," says Whitney - so they are pulling off one last,
mega-heist before it sinks beneath the waves.
The rest of us
must fashion new institutions to perform the societal tasks that were
purportedly the domain of the now-extinct investment bankers: to gather large
amounts of capital for projects of social value - for example, a Marshall-type
Plan for the cities, a nationwide infrastructure makeover, and fulfillment of
the 70-year old federal commitment to provide truly affordable housing for
everyone. And of course, jobs, jobs, jobs.
"We must fashion new institutions to perform the societal
tasks that were purportedly the domain of the now-extinct investment bankers."
We have
many other uses for that $700 billion - what Barack Obama called "our last
bullet," although intending to make it a gift to mega-thieves - for instance,
to provide relief to current and future homeowner (and rental) victims of the
housing bubble that will take years to fully deflate, as prices (and rents)
decrease to levels consistent with wages and other social factors.
In a
perverse way, Henry Paulson and his co-conspirators have done the public a
great favor. He has told us that, Yes, the federal government can come
up with $700-plus billion, in an instant, if the health of the nation demands
it. He has expanded the fiscal scope of the domestic political conversation, so
that it may encompass projects of transformational size. Never again can the
corporate class speak of socially valuable projects being so large as to "break
the bank" or the budget. Popular forces are now free to think large, too,
without being ridiculed from the corporate Right.
The demise
of finance capital's premiere institutions, and the brutal arrogance with which
their servants moved to strip the commonweal of every squeezable drop of cash,
has alerted vast sectors of the citizenry to the reality of
capitalism-in-crisis in ways that no amount of Left agitation could have
accomplished.
Technical
public "ownership" of previously "private" institutions has been thrust upon us
by the capitalists, themselves. But this is merely an opening for the great
debates and struggles that must follow. Power does not devolve to "the people"
by simple virtue of majority shares in failing institutions or even outright
nationalization. And "the people" have no need of institutions that serve no
purpose but as creatures of capital.
The second
casualty of the current crisis, after the collapse of the financial sector, is
surely the twin-party game of musical chairs that served to legitimize the rule
of capital. The obscenity of a Democrat-Republican syndicate arrayed against
the roaring, raging sentiments of citizens of all self-described political
persuasions, cannot be erased from the collective national memory - even if
congressional party leaders succeed in whipping their members into line, later
this week.
"The second casualty of the current crisis is the
twin-party game of musical chairs."
When
catastrophe hits, radicals must be ready. Recent events have proven Cynthia
McKinney and Rosa Clemente to be amazingly prescient in their belief that the
Green Party can be - I emphasize can be - a vehicle for presenting and
popularizing a truly transformational program for social change. (See McKinney
"The
Financial Crisis: Seize the Time!" BAR September 24.) McKinney and Clemente
always intended that the Green Party become a nexus for the roiling social
currents set in motion by the inexorable decomposition of ruling class
institutions. The Democratic and Republican Parties, creatures of capital, are
decomposing in full view, as witnessed by the events of this week. Too fragile
to weather real political storms, they will not survive the larger, unfolding
crisis of capital as twin hegemons. As the crisis deepens, the parties will
crack - at a pace dictated by the increasing frequency of convulsions.
When we are
confronted with the surreal spectacle of John McCain and Barack Obama
attempting to destroy each other even as they rush to deliver nearly a trillion
dollars to the same master, while the people scream at both of them to "Stop!"
- we know that "change" is coming. But not the kind the Democrats or
Republicans anticipate.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
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