Bankers Use Crisis to Strengthen Oligarchy

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Broadcasters and others who need a downloadable MP3 copy of this commentary can obtain it on our BA Radio archive page.

"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 [email protected].

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