I’ve yet to find anyone who shares my feelings, but I was quite uncomfortable with former President Barack Obama’s first public speaking opportunity upon retirement. He was on a panel at the University of Chicago that focused on community activism.

He had been off the public stage for some time and we all knew that he was taking deserved time off for R & R. He had spent part of the time on a yacht in Tahiti as well as palling around with British venturist and billionaire Richard Branson in the Bahamas. He was definitely living “the high life” and the argument that he is entitled to do whatever he wants certainly holds water. But somehow the gap between Chicago community activism and Tahiti seemed too big for me.

As I reflected upon living former Democratic presidents, I could not help but notice the contrast between the lives that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have lived. Yes, both have been very involved in charitable enterprises to help those in need, primarily in Africa, Asia and South America. But Clinton’s work with the Clinton Global Initiative has been very glitzy and with the glitterati. Carter’s work through the Carter Center has been very hands on and with dirty hands. He lives a very unpretentious life back in Atlanta and Plains, GA. He interacts daily with people who live very non-assuming lives and who are well-connected with the struggles that middle and low-income people face in the United States and around the world.

Like so many people, I was taken with Barack Obama when I read Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. This unassuming man was concerned with reaching his own potential while serving the common good. Upon graduating from law school, he passed up opportunities to work on Wall Street and instead worked to serve the people in Chicago who he had previously come to know as a community organizer. He later became a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

As a candidate for president, he initially supported the public financing of campaigns. During his 2008 campaign, he learned that his popularity was not only with grassroots people, but also with large financial interests. For him to maximize revenue for his campaign, it behooved him to take a pass on public financing and instead take as much as he legally could from entrenched sources including Wall Street. When he became president, he took care of Wall Street while also working for the economic and social advances of the middle class and those in poverty.

I can’t help but wonder how Barack Obama’s presidency and possibly his post-presidency would be had there been a strong public financing program in place for running for president, with strict penalties for refusing to take the public route. It is certainly likely that Obama would have had less contact with the moguls of Wall Street. It is possible that during his presidency Wall Street would not have escaped with only one culprit of the 2007-08 economic demise having gone to prison.

Sometimes circumstances cause us to lose our grounding. It’s presumptuous of me or anyone else to claim that we know anyone else’s grounding. What I am comfortable saying is that I would feel better if Barack Obama was more in touch with those with whom he worked on the south side of Chicago than those on the Street. He’s young and his post-presidency cannot be defined in 100 days.

I’m hoping that he takes more pages out of Jimmy Carter’s book and fewer out of Bill Clinton’s.

The post Could Obama learn from Jimmy Carter about presidential retirement? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It’s nothing new to say that sometimes Hillary Clinton is her own worst enemy. I’ve been a Bernie supporter, but I really want to enthusiastically support Hillary because (a) she likely will be the Democratic nominee, and (b) all things being equal (or even close to equal), I certainly would prefer to have a woman candidate, and then president.

It’s interesting how Hillary has been involved in so many “cover-ups” beginning with Whitewater in Arkansas, and then Gennifer Flowers (yes, with a ‘G’), an alleged Bill femme fatale in days past. Her modus operandi seems to be to disclose considerable information, but not enough to put people’s concerns to rest. But interestingly enough, none of the alleged scandals, or wrong-doings that have come to light over the past twenty-five years have turned out to be anything close to what the accusers say they are. I imagine that the F.B.I. investigation of her personal mail server, which she used while serving as Secretary of State, will again determine that while her judgments were less than optimal, overall the situation is much ado about nothing.

The transcripts of her three speeches before Goldman-Sachs and other Wall Street firms may not be as insignificant as she would like us to believe. As of now, we know little about them. Politico has reported that during one of the Goldman speeches, “Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish.”

This tidbit is far from being either conclusive or damning. But as mystery shrouds the contents of her speeches, they are a breeding ground for rumors, and there is little doubt that Donald Trump will use fact or fiction without distinction to try to bring her down.

Like so many, I am very curious about what she said in those speeches. If it’s left up to Hillary, it’s close to a certainty that I will never find out. But The Hill is now reporting that “GOP operatives on the prowl for secret Clinton transcripts.” This is what we call opposition research. I have always disliked such action because it seems to be the engine that drives negativity in politics. But when there is something in the dark that needs to be sanitized by sunlight, then I will grudgingly accept it.

According to The Hill,

Ian Prior, the communications director for the well-funded Republican group American Crossroads, said information about the Goldman Sachs speeches could prove cataclysmic for the Democratic Party.

Finding and releasing the transcripts “would be a heck of a way to outflank Hillary on her left [in a general election] and stop Bernie’s supporters from voting for her,” he said.

American Crossroads is one of those Karl Rove-founded Super-Pacs that excels in raising money (hundreds of millions in the 2012 presidential cycle), and in losing big (a success rate in the single digits). But that doesn’t mean that it can’t hire sleuths to investigate real or imagined transgressions by opponents. The truth doesn’t matter; what counts is arriving at a conclusion that could be embarrassing in the cross-hairs. Consider it to be the 2010s version on the 1970s “plumbers” established by Richard Nixon.

What I’d like American Crossroads to find would be the truth; i.e. an actual transcript of what Hillary Clinton said in those speeches. In a sense, it would be a relief to Hillary Clinton; she would no longer have to stonewall this issue. It’s also quite possible that she wisely hedged her bets when she spoke on Wall Street and said very little to the moguls that would inflame Democrats. If she said more, she could explain it to many by saying that she had to throw out some red meat to the crowd because she was being paid $225,000 a pop for these speeches. Americans could understand that as they accept Trump’s fixation with being wealthy.

But perhaps most importantly, Hillary Clinton could do what so many would like her to do … say that that was then and this is now. In the past, she felt that she had to kowtow to Wall Street go gain their good graces and their political donations. If she becomes the Democratic nominee, that will no longer be necessary, she can try to emulate Bernie Sanders’ small donations strategy once she eschews the big bucks coming from a concentrated and very powerful segment of the American population.

It’s not just a question of changing her ways in order to win the election. With Trump as the likely Republican nominee, she will be the odds-on favorite to win the presidency. But governing with questions unanswered that should be answered will plague her throughout her presidency. In a former life, Clinton was on the staff of the Senate Watergate Committee; she needs now to review her notes from that period. It’s been extremely difficult for Barack Obama to govern without a scintilla of a scandal or cover-up. If Clinton wins the presidency, it well may be nothing but trouble if she even has the appearance of withholding what the public deserves to know. That’s why in this one rare case, I’m rooting for American Crossroads to do Hillary a favor and to find the transcripts.

The post Rooting for GOP opposition research on Hillary appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The Town Hall meetings with the candidates in 2015-16 have been outstanding. They provide a real opportunity to hear from the candidates when they are far more relaxed than in the debates. With Democrats, we get the bonus of real discussion on important topics.

I was watching the CNN Town Hall meeting on Tuesday, February 24, from Columbia, SC. Up until that point, I had been leaning in favor of Bernie Sanders, and I probably still am. But Hillary Clinton really impressed me with her presentation, her demeanor, and the specialness of her comfort with the large number of African-Americans in the audience.

But when moderator Chris Cuomo asked her about the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms, she seemed to tense up. It was interesting, because in the conversation, the name of President Richard Nixon (“I’m not a crook.”) came up. It struck me that Clinton was giving non-answers to questions in a way that was similar to Nixon’s answers when he was under fire.

Cuomo referenced Clinton’s lack of disclosure about the transcripts as the “temptation of the unknown.” Forty-three years ago. American citizens were curious about what happened on the morning of June 17, 1972 in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. They were also interested in what went on in Richard Nixon’s White House in the days just before and after the break-in. This temptation, this curiosity, set off investigative reporting that perhaps has never been paralleled, as well as possibly the most riveting Congressional hearings ever.

With Clinton, the reporting has been aggressive, but to date no journalist has publicly revealed the contents of any of her remarks to the titans of Wall Street. So long as there is mystery, there will continue to be interest. To use another phrase from Cuomo, this means that the “drip, drip, drip” will continue.

In a prelude to a question to Clinton, Cuomo showed a clip from Hillary Clinton’s recent appearance on the Stephen Colbert Show. In it, Colbert ask Clinton if she has ever told a lie. Clinton said that as a public figure she has never lied to the people and she never will in the future. Colbert, and later Cuomo, were a little bit miffed that she didn’t “just say no,” as in she has never lied.

That strikes me as an unrealistic standard; we all tell lies when we find something else to be so compelling that it temporarily takes precedence over the truth.

Perhaps what we really seek is reasonableness. For Clinton, or anyone else, to say they never have lied is rather preposterous. Why not be straightforward and say: “Yes, I have lied and probably will again, but I hope that whenever I do it is because ‘the greater good’ requires me to do so.”

When answering questions about her speeches to Wall Street, why not simply say that because she was getting paid, she said things that probably made the audiences happ,y but which do not reflect her real views on the relationship between Wall Street and Washington. In other words, she was paid to lie.

While some would deplore that, most would understand how that could come to be. Most importantly, she would get out in front of the issue. No more “drip, drip, drip” on this one.

Richard Nixon committed impeachable offenses, and before he resigned, he was on his way to being impeached. In the Hillary Clinton cases that have been fully examined, such as Whitewater and the death of Vince Foster, she has come out squeaky clean. Releasing the Wall Street transcripts could cause immediate damage, but that could be somewhat offset if she said that she now understands why the American people want her to be independent of the Street, and that she will no longer accept their money, and even better, return the money from the speeches (which she could now afford).

With the exception of her “rope-a-dope” responses to legitimate questions about her relationship with Wall Street, Clinton left a very positive impression in that Town Hall meeting. She has some distinct advantages over Sanders. He will never rise to the level of knowledge and confidence that she has when speaking about foreign affairs. While he has a very positive record on civil rights, her life experiences on the vanguard of change seem a little stronger than his. And it is Sanders, not Clinton, who does “the dance” when it comes to gun control.

Whether this is politically correct or not to say, it strikes me that Hillary Clinton looks a hell of a lot younger than the six years that separate their ages. She also has a calmer temperament.

Maybe Clinton will never change on the disclosure issues. There are observers who say that many people like to live on the edge. Two people who readily come to mind are Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. If that is where Hillary Clinton wants to be, then she has to accept the skepticism that comes with it. But I think that what millions of Americans would like would be for Clinton to get more in touch with her walks in the danger zone, and for her to learn the easy path back to a more trustworthy road. It’s not too late.

The post Hillary Clinton, meet Richard Nixon, and learn from him appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Hillary Clinton finds herself on the defensive, doing rope-a-dope, against certain charges from both the media and Bernie Sanders. Where Sanders is concerned, Clinton’s Achilles heel is her relationship with Wall Street. Specifically, Clinton is vulnerable with her contention that she has never been influenced by the money from Wall Street that has been paid to her as speaking fees or cash contributions to her campaign and associated SuperPACs.

Clinton contends that there is no evidence that she has never changed a vote or a policy position because of money from Wall Street. There is some validation to this because so far no one, including those on the right wing, have been able to relate any policy positions that she takes to the millions that she has received from Wall Street.

But a real question is whether her contention passes the giggle test. The fact that there are people giggling may help explain why her support is so poor among young voters. According to the New York Times,

Some 87 percent of likely New Hampshire primary voters ages 18 to 29 said they would vote for Mr. Sanders in the state’s primary on Tuesday, compared with 13 percent for Mrs. Clinton, according to a UMass-Lowell poll conducted Feb. 1 to 3.

The conundrum for Clinton is that even if it may be true that she has never been influenced by Wall Street, it’s too big a stretch for young voters to believe. It’s as if the university president at an SEC university said that the scholar-athletes were among the university’s most serious students.

So here’s a suggestion to Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Simply say that while it is her belief that she has never been influenced by Wall Street money, she understands that there is a wide-spread perception that she has been. Furthermore, she is as determined as Bernie Sanders to reign in the excesses of Wall Street and she knows that she will be taken more seriously if she is no longer taking money from either Wall Street or other big corporate interests.

If Clinton would take this step, there would be several clear benefits. First, she would have much “cleaner arguments” in her effort to curb Wall Street abuses. Second, she would be building immunity to Sanders’ charges that she still is too cozy to the Street. Third, it would counter the argument that she’s always “late to the party” when it comes to acknowledging her mistakes.

It took her thirteen years and two presidential campaigns to finally apologize for her 2002 Senate vote endorsing President George W. Bush’s already-failed strategy with Iraq. And who can forget the pain, all through the summer of 2015 and into the fall, until Clinton acknowledged that she had made a mistake in how she handled her e-mails while Secretary of State. And her initial answer to Chuck Todd’s question about whether she will release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs seems to indicate that we’re in for a long wait before they see the light of day.

For progressives, Clinton is often “right” on the issues, but in far too many cases it takes time for her to get there. It would be great if she could catch up with Sanders on Wall Street. What if she went a step further and was able to get President Obama to say that if he was running now, he too would not accept Wall Street donations. What a coup!

Like many, I currently prefer Bernie Sanders on the issues. However, I respect Clinton’s experience and also think that it is time for the United States to have a female president. I just hope that she can quickly move to reform her campaign to bring more credibility to her progressive ideas.

The post What Hillary Clinton might say to help herself appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In a recent interview in Jacobin, linguist, philosopher, and political activist Noam Chomsky gave an interesting answer to a question about the American capitalist system. He basically said we don’t have one. We have something else, more akin to “state capitalism.”

And by not being engaged and involved in the political process, we’ve allowed corporations and banks to “run things,” to take over government. We’ve felt powerless to effect change, and we’ve allowed them to suck up resources that should be going to fund projects and policies that directly help us and the communities where we live.

Chomsky’s comment on our so called “capitalist system:”

What’s called “the capitalist system” is very far from any model of capitalism or market. Take the fossil fuels industries: there was a recent study by the IMF, which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism.

I think Chomsky is saying that our form of capitalism is not one Adam Smith would recognize. In our version, fossil fuel companies fund politicians, who then vote for industry subsidies. Even though the industry is a big contributor to climate change, the government continues to promote fossil fuels. Bought senators and congressmen continue to give away money to a highly profitable industry that doesn’t need it. Money in politics has a life of its own, and it’s not benign. If a senator or congressperson stops voting for subsidies, there’s hell to pay when he or she is up for reelection. Not only will they no longer get campaign donations, they will have money being spent against them. We live under the illusion that  we have a “free-market” economy, when its more akin to a mafia-run protection racket.

Chomsky turns the conversation to banks:

And the same is true of other components of the so-called capitalist system. By now, in the US and other Western countries, there’s been, during the neoliberal period, a sharp increase in the financialization of the economy. Financial institutions in the US had about 40 percent of corporate profits on the eve of the 2008 collapse, for which they had a large share of responsibility.

There’s another IMF study that investigated the profits of American banks, and it found that they were almost entirely dependent on implicit public subsidies. There’s a kind of a guarantee—it’s not on paper, but it’s an implicit guarantee—that if they get into trouble they will be bailed out. That’s called too-big-to-fail.

And the credit rating agencies of course know that, they take that into account, and with high credit ratings, financial institutions get privileged access to cheaper credit, they get subsidies if things go wrong and many other incentives, which effectively amounts to perhaps their total profit. The business press tried to make an estimate of this number and guessed about $80 billion a year. That’s got nothing to do with capitalism.

It’s clear that without massive subsidies and bailouts, the banks would be insolvent. In a real capitalist system they would have been failed businesses. Chomsky is not the first to point this out. For nearly imploding the world economy, banks were rewarded with access to free money, which they use, not for repairing the damage they did to main street, but for speculation. Thanks to Bill Clinton removing the wall between traditional and investment banking, big banks continue to operate like gambling casinos.

Corporations, too, have been borrowing money at very low, or no interest for stock buy-backs, which raises stock prices and CEO pay. Profits are off-shored and tax-sheltered. Nothing big banks and big corporations are doing right now is helping middle class and working people. Chomsky continues:

It’s the same in many other sectors of the economy. So the real question is, will this system of state capitalism, which is what it is, survive the continued use of fossil fuels? And the answer to that is, of course, no.

By now, there’s a pretty strong consensus among scientists who say that a large majority of the remaining fossil fuels, maybe 80 percent, have to be left in the ground if we hope to avoid a temperature rise which would be pretty lethal. And, unfortunately, that’s not happening. Humans may be destroying their chances for a decent survival. It won’t kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically.

This is Chomsky’s conclusion if the current situation were to continue. But there’s a rebellion brewing against the status quo. Bernie Sanders in the US, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Alex Tsipris in Greece, and Pablo Iglesias in Spain are openly challenging the corporate/bank/billionaire grip on their respective governments. And in Canada, the Liberal Party just won back control of Parliament after nine years of the conservative Harper government. So, there’s reason for hope.

Getting a person or party elected is not enough

We can’t pin all our hopes on another Wall Street-funded candidate. Chomsky thinks it will take pressure from a large popular movement to effectively challenge the grip of money and power on government. The job of activists and organizers, he says, is to help people understand they have power, and even though they feel powerless, they’re not powerless. “People feel impotent, but that has to be overcome.”

About Bernie Sanders, Chomsky feels it’s pretty unlikely in a system of bought elections that he could win. And even if he won, he would be abandoned by both corporate parties, In other words, he couldn’t get much done. But, even if he loses he will have made a positive contribution. Chiomsky says:

In fact, the Sanders campaign I think is valuable—it’s opening up issues, it’s maybe pressing the mainstream Democrats a little bit in a progressive direction, and it is mobilizing a lot of popular forces, and the most positive outcome would be if they remain after the election.

It’s a serious mistake to just to be geared to the quadrennial electoral extravaganza and then go home. That’s not the way changes take place. The mobilization could lead to a continuing popular organization, which could maybe have an effect in the long run.

A little history

In 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama could have nurtured and expanded his extremely effective Obama for America organization to be exactly the kind of popular organization Chomsky calls for—one standing behind him and supporting him in demanding real change—but he funneled everyone into the newly formed “Organizing for America.” Organizing for America served to neutralize and eventually shut down the enthusiasm and populist energy stirred up by his campaign, thwarting any threat to the big money interests that bankrolled his election. As Gloria Bilchik wrote in 2010, OFA became a propaganda machine for the President and a subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee.

The best outcome of the coming election will be if Bernie’s followers form a truly progressive organization independent of the Democratic Party. It’s purpose would be to keep pressure on politicians to do the right thing for the American people.

The post Noam Chomsky: On capitalism and why electing Bernie isn’t enough appeared first on Occasional Planet.

From Truth and Satire:

Every single mainstream media has the following narrative for the economic crisis in Greece: the government spent too much money and went broke; the generous banks gave them money, but Greece still can’t pay the bills because it mismanaged the money that was given. It sounds quite reasonable, right?

Except that it is a big fat lie … not only about Greece, but about other European countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland who are all experiencing various degrees of austerity. It was also the same big, fat lie that was used by banks and corporations to exploit many Latin American, Asian and African countries for many decades.

Greece did not fail on its own. It was made to fail.

Consider a recent article in the New York Times by Neil Irwin. The title says it all: “Now Europe Must Decide Whether to Make an Example of Greece.” Those lazy Greeks,” Irwin’s title suggests, “need to be taught a lesson. “

Here’s an excerpt, my emphasis:

The choice for leaders of Germany, France and the rest of Europe will look something like this:

If they tolerate the Greek government’s demands, they will be setting a bad example for every other country that might wish to challenge the strictures of the European Union, telling voters in Portugal and Spain and Italy that if they make enough fuss, and elect extremist parties they too will get a much sweeter deal. It would send the signal that a country can borrow all it likes, walk away from those debts and make the rest of Europe pay the bill, as long as it is intransigent enough. 

Notice Irwin’s use of the word, “tolerate,” as if the Greek government is a bratty, demanding child. He says a challenge to power cannot be allowed—have to nip that in the bud before it spreads to other “lazy” countries. Irwin calls anti-establishment, left political parties, like Greece’s Syriza, extremist. Syriza is “extreme, ” I guess, because it chooses the needs of ordinary people over making banks and hedge funds whole. Finally, he characterizes the Greek people as insufferable deadbeats.

Irwin’s “good vs. bad, white hat/black hat” narrative satisfies the embarrassingly uninformed and gullible American public, and protects the people, banks and institutions that caused the biggest global wealth heist in history.

“Bad Greeks!” Irwin is saying, “They’re getting what they deserve for spending way beyond their means.“ Being an unrepentant bank groupie, I’m sure he believes that. In 2013, Irwin wrote The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire, a book on how three central bankers dealt with the 2008 financial meltdown. One Amazon reviewer described it as “Pathetic drooling over something that is essentially an anti-democratic institution. The book is littered with fawning details of how some central banker was travelling in a limousine when he received a call about markets being on fire. Or how Draghi was eating smoked goat cheese (or whatever is it that elites eat) when the Greece crisis erupted and then he had to do something on his mahogany table.”

The book earned the endorsement of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, an organization whose sole mission is to cut Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and lower taxes on the wealthy. If you didn’t get it from reading Irwin’s article, his book tells you where he stands psychologically and politically. He is typical of the sycophants who populate mainstream media.

My point in critiquing Irwin’s article is to encourage readers, especially those who call themselves “progressive,” to pay attention to the underlying perspective of those who speak or write in mainstream news outlets. What are their values? With whose interests do they identify?

Given the serial mendacity of the NYT, it’s important to look elsewhere to understand world events, and, in this case, what caused the crisis in Greece. Look for writers and journalists who identify with the struggles of the majority population, and who have a clear-eyed view of the rampant corruption in government, banks, and the private sector around the world. Look for writers who, at minimum, are not in awe of the wealthy and the powerful.

For starters, you might try Conn Hallinan’s “Europe’s Debt: Lies & Myths. Hallinan does a great job of countering Irwin’s myths by placing Greece’s plight in historical context. Here’s an excerpt, my emphasis:

Myths are dangerous precisely because they rely more on cultural memory and prejudice than facts, and behind the current crisis between Greece and the European Union (EU) lays a fable that bears little relationship to why Athens and a number of other countries in the 28-member organization find themselves in deep distress.

The tale is a variation of Aesop’s allegory of the industrious ant and the lazy, fun-loving grasshopper, with the “northern countries”—Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Finland—playing the role of the ant, and Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland the part of the grasshopper.

The ants are sober and virtuous—lead by the frugal Swanbian house frau, German Chancellor Angela Merkel—the grasshoppers are spendthrift, corrupt lay-abouts who have spent themselves into trouble and now must pay the piper.

The problem is that this myth bears almost no relationship to the actual roots of the crisis or what the solutions might be. And it perpetuates a fable that the debt is the fault of individual countries rather than a serious crisis at the very heart of the EU.
<snip>
In Greece’s case corruption was at the heart of the crisis, but not the popular version about armies of public workers and tax dodging oligarchs. There are rich tax dodgers aplenty in Greece, but Germany, Sweden, and many other European countries spend more of their GDP on services than does Athens. Greece spends 44.6 percent of its GDP on its citizens, less than the EU average and below Germany’s 46 percent and Sweden’s 55 percent.

And as for lazy: Greeks work 600 hours more a year than Germans. According to economist Mark Blyth, author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, Greek public spending through the 2000s is “really on track and quite average in comparison to everyone else’s,” and the so-called flood of “public sector jobs” consisted of “ 14,000 over two years.” All the talk of the profligate Greek government is “a lot of nonsense” and just “political cover for the fact that what we’ve done is bail out some of the richest people in European society and put the cost on some of the poorest.”

There was a “score” in Greece. However, it had nothing to do with free spending; it was a scheme dreamed up by Greek politicians, bankers, and the American finance corporation, Goldman Sachs.

Greece’s application for EU membership in 1999 was rejected because its budget deficit in relation to its GDP was over 3 percent, the cutoff line for joining. That’s where Goldman Sachs came in. For a fee rumored to be $200 million (some say three times that), the multinational giant essentially cooked the books to make Greece look like it cleared the bar. Then Greece’s political and economic establishment hid the scheme until the 2008 crash shattered the illusion.

It was the busy little ants, not the fiddling grasshoppers that brought on the European debt crisis.

American, German, French, and Dutch banks had to know that they were creating an unstable real estate bubble—a 500 percent jump in housing prices is the very definition of the beast—but kept right on lending because they were making out like bandits.

When the bubble popped and Europe went into recession, Greece was forced to apply for a “bailout” from the Troika [The European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund]. In exchange for 172 billon Euros, the Greek government instituted an austerity program that saw economic activity decline 25 percent, unemployment rise to 27 Percent (and over 50 percent for young Greeks). The cutbacks slashed pensions, wages, and social services, and drove 44 percent of the population into poverty.

Virtually all of the “bailout”—89 percent—went to the banks that gambled in the 1999 to 2007 real estate casino. What the Greek—as well as Spaniards, Portuguese, and Irish—got was misery.

The post Myths and lies about Greece appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Being a United States Senator from Vermont is a difficult job, but it pales in comparison to being President of the United States. As the junior senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders has far more leeway in the positions that he can take than President Obama does. He’s not just a senator from a single state, he’s a senator (along with Patrick Leahy) from perhaps the most progressive state in the union.

When it comes to assessing the wisdom or advisability of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, Sanders is under far less pressure from entrenched powers than the President is. There are zero (count ‘em, none) Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Vermont. Vermont accounts for only 0.2% of exports from the United States. Take these two factors, and you put a representative in a position to truly look out for the well-being of individual workers and small businesses.

Doing so is not necessarily a slam-dunk. Vermont’s neighbor, New Hampshire, also is home to zero Fortune 500 companies and accounts for only 0.3% of American exports. Yet Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire has a voting record that is more conservative than that of Richard Shelby of Alabama or Thad Cochran of Mississippi.

All of which is to say that a treaty of the magnitude of the TPP should not be considered cavalierly by the United States Senate. Yet this is precisely what President Barack Obama proposed and what the Senate came close to doing. Fortunately, on May 12, 2015, a sufficient number of Democrats joined with anti-Obama Republicans to forestall the Fast-Track consideration of the partnership. It appears that now the Senate will assume its normal responsibility when it comes to ratifying treaties; it will provide its advice and consent.

The stakes in the treaty are just too high for any other approach. This is a treaty that presumably spans the Pacific Ocean, but does not include a country as large as and with as much international trade as China. One of the goals of the treaty is to strengthen relations between the United States and selected Pacific countries, but there is apparently little in the proposed agreement to ensure that China is not left on the outside looking in. I say “apparently” because part of the Fast Track approach has been to limit access to the actual text of the treaty. This includes Members of Congress.

In Senator Sanders’ words:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world.

The TPP is a treaty that has been written behind closed doors by the corporate world. Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process.

Sanders states that the agreement would be at the expense of workers, consumers and the environment. Supporters of these three interests represent a large piece of the pie that twice elected Barack Obama. It may be difficult to understand that the President is risking their ire and discounting their support, but the forces in the United States behind the treaty are vast and powerful. They include bankers, manufacturers of good and services that are exported, and a host of other business on America’s Pacific coast that profit from trade. These forces are doing what they would be expected to do, promoting their own economic self-interestd. Such is the nature of capitalism. And when we broaden our view to the relationship between monied interests and politics, it is no surprise that these are among the top financial backers that the President has had in his campaigns.

As to why Senator Ayotte of New Hampshire looks at this and many other issues quite differently from Bernie Sanders, all we need to do is to look at her primary contributors. In many ways, they read as a group similar to the Presidents big-time contributors. Senator Sanders takes no contributions from Wall Street. In contrast, nineteen of Senator Sanders’ twenty largest contributors are labor unions.

We are most fortunate to have a senator and now presidential candidate like Bernie Sanders who is not allowing the country’s largest economic interests to guide his position on an issue as important as the TPP. It’s likely that President Obama will continue to slug it out for the treaty for the remainder of his term. As with so many mysteries about his distance from progressive positions on key issues, we can only hope that when he writes his memoirs, he will let us know if he truly embraced the TPP, or if he felt that he owed it to certain interests to support it. Maybe he’ll write his memoirs during the administration of President Bernie Sanders.

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Since 2009, the Obama administration has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Parnership (TPP) trade agreement in secret. Only lawyers and advisors representing banks and corporations, and trade representatives from other nations are allowed to participate. Until recently, senators and congressmen had been left in the dark. Under protest, Obama gave them very limited access to the document. He told them they are forbidden, under threat of government prosecution, from discussing the trade deal with the public.

Rep. Alan Grayson said “Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”

Obama, trying his best to sell a pig in a poke, is pushing the TPP as promoting “free trade,” which he equates with creating more jobs and prosperity for the American people. He claims it will be “good for the middle class.” This. of course, is exactly what Bill Clinton said about NAFTA in 1993.

A report published by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in 2014 reviews the promises and failures of NAFTA:

Like the TPP, NAFTA was sold to the U.S. public in 1993 with grand promises. The deal would create hundreds of thousands of good jobs here–170,000 jobs within the pact’s first two years, according the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. farmers would export their way to wealth. NAFTA would bring Mexico to a first-world level of economic prosperity and stability, providing new economic opportunities that would reduce immigration to the United States. Environmental standards would improve.

Twenty years later, the grand projections and promises made by NAFTA’s proponents remain unfulfilled.

The report details how destructive NAFTA has been for the citizens of the United States and Mexico:

The data show that NAFTA proponents’ projections of broad economic benefits from the deal have failed to materialize. Instead, millions have suffered job loss, wage stagnation, and economic instability from NAFTA. Scores of environmental, health and other public interest policies have been challenged. Consumer safeguards, including key food safety protections, have been rolled back. And NAFTA supporters’ warnings about the chaos that would engulf Mexico, and a new wave of migration from Mexico, if NAFTA was not implemented have indeed come to pass, but ironically because of the devastation of many Mexicans’ livelihoods occurring, in part, because NAFTA was implemented.

What exactly is “free trade?”

Independent political writer, “Gaius Publius,” explains the meaning of the term “free trade” in the context of the TPP.

[I]n essence “free trade” means one thing to most of us and another thing to people with money. For us, “free trade” is about exchange of goods. Not for those with almost all the money in the world. For them, “free trade” is and always has been this:

“Free trade” means “unrestricted capital flow.” It’s the right of money to flow anywhere it wants, seeking any profit it can, unrestricted by any government, and then flow back out again on a whim.

Before FDR, this is what “liberalism” meant; it’s why people like the infamous free-market economist Friedrich Hayek are considered “classic liberal economists.” FDR so changed the definition of “liberal,” in fact—by allowing a place for government in the management of the economy—that it led people like Hayek to object that the name had been misappropriated:

In 1977, Hayek was critical of the Lib-Lab pact, in which the British Liberal Party agreed to keep the British Labour government in office. Writing to The Times, Hayek said, “May one who has devoted a large part of his life to the study of the history and the principles of liberalism point out that a party that keeps a socialist government in power has lost all title to the name ‘Liberal’. Certainly no liberal can in future vote ‘Liberal'”.

This “free market” stuff has been with us for centuries in the West, and it’s always about capital and the rights of capital to be free of government. Guess who that benefits? If you said “capitalists and the politicians who serve them,” you’d be right. You can’t have a predatory Industrial Revolution without that kind of “philosophy” in place as a cover story.

Needless to say, the cover story is still in place. Welcome to the world of TPP.

The TPP “free trade” deal, up close and personal

Besides losing your job to someone in one of the TPP countries, there are other ways the TPP could directly impact your life. For example, the TPP will free banks and corporations from the constraints of government laws and regulations—both here and in other signatory countries—by setting up a corporate-run legal tribunal that would supersede all government jurisprudence. What exactly does that mean?

Lambert Strether, writing at Naked Capitalism, gives us examples of how this form of absolute rule by corporations enshrined in the TPP could play out in your state or your neighborhood.

So, if you were a corporate lawyer, sitting in judgement on a TPP tribunal, totting up the damages some hapless government had wreaked against a corporation by, oh, providing its citizens with single payer health care, or preventing an oil company from poisoning their groundwater through “excessive regulation,”—or halting development to protect a historic site under local zoning ordinances, or halting the East-West Corridor to protect the Penobscot—what would you consider “distinct, reasonable, investment-backed expectations”? I’d guess it would be the Net Present Value (capitalization) calculations done by the wounded corporation itself, eh? Like on an Excel spreadsheet. What could be more credible? Or more just?

In other words, TPP elevates capitalization—the expectation of profit—as a principle to the level of, say, the Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of the Rights of Man. And then, government, when it provides concrete material benefits to its citizens, must “compensate” capitalists whenever their calculated, immaterial expectations—capitalization—have been “expropriated.” What a racket! TPP is the biggest enclosure in the history of the world!

“Arbitrary control”—absolutism—in service of capital as a global change in the constitutional order, and all done in secret. What could go wrong?

It’s no wonder Obama wants to keep this deal secret from the American people. It is written by and for corporations, it undermines national sovereignty and nullifies your voice as a citizen.

Elizabeth Warren, who has been highly critical of Obama negotiating the TPP in secret, had this to say on her blog:

Have you seen what’s in the new TPP trade deal?

Most likely, you haven’t – and don’t bother trying to Google it. The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret.

Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: “We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”

If the American people would be opposed to a trade agreement if they saw it, then that agreement should not become the law of the United States.

Well said, Senator Warren! And shame on you President Obama.

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In one of the most astonishing speeches ever given from the senate floor, progressive Democrat, Senator Elizabeth Warren, called out the Obama administration for being a wholly owned subsidiary of Citibank. Her speech was prompted by a Wall Street bomb inserted at the last minute in the Omnibus spending package gutting a key provision from the already watered down Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. That provision regulated how banks trade in derivatives. The banks wanted to, once again, gamble with FDIC insured deposits and, if the derivative deals blow up as before, to be bailed out, once again, by taxpayers.

Obama, a master of triangulation, urged that, in the spirit of bipartisanship, members of Congress vote for the bill, which he has since signed. Senator Warren says the deregulation of derivatives was in the bill because Obama and his Citibank friends wanted it there.

 Warren’s extraordinary 10-minute speech

Transcript: Citibank given tremendous power in the Obama administration

Mr. President, in recent years, many Wall Street institutions have exerted extraordinary influence in Washington’s corridors of power, but Citigroup has risen above the others. Its grip over economic policymaking in the executive branch is unprecedented. Consider a few examples:

• Three of the last four Treasury Secretaries under Democratic presidents have had close Citigroup ties. The fourth was offered the CEO position at Citigroup, but turned it down.
• The Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve is a Citigroup alum.
• The Undersecretary for International Affairs at Treasury is a Citigroup alum.
• The U.S. Trade Representative and the person nominated to be his deputy – who is currently an assistant secretary at Treasury – are Citigroup alums.
• A recent chairman of the National Economic Council at the White House was a Citigroup alum.
• Another recent Chairman of the Office of Management and Budget went to Citigroup immediately after leaving the White House.
• Another recent Chairman of the Office of Management of Budget and Management is also a Citi alum — but I’m double counting here because now he’s the Secretary of the Treasury.

That’s a lot of powerful people, all from one bank. But they aren’t Citigroup’s only source of power. Over the years, the company has spent millions of dollars on lobbying Congress and funding the political campaigns of its friends in the House and the Senate.

Citigroup has also spent millions trying to influence the political process in ways that are far more subtle—and hidden from public view. Last year, I wrote Citigroup and other big banks a letter asking them to disclose the amount of shareholder money they have been diverting to think tanks to influence public policy.

Citigroup’s response to my letter? Stonewalling. A year has gone by, and Citigroup didn’t even acknowledge receiving the letter.

Citigroup has a lot of money, it spends a lot of money, and it uses that money to grow and consolidate a lot of power. And it pays off. Consider a couple facts.

Fact one: During the financial crisis, when all the support through TARP and from the FDIC and the Fed is added up, Citi received nearly half a trillion dollars in bailouts. That’s half a trillion with a “t.” That’s almost $140 billion more than the next biggest bank got.

Fact two: During Dodd-Frank, there was an amendment introduced by my colleague Senator Brown and Senator Kaufman that would have broken up Citigroup and the nation’s other largest banks. That amendment had bipartisan support, and it might have passed, but it ran into powerful opposition from an alliance between Wall Streeters on Wall Street and Wall Streeters who held powerful government jobs. They teamed up and blocked the move to break up the banks—and now Citi is bigger than ever.

The role that senior officials working in the Treasury department played in killing the amendment was not subtle: A senior Treasury official acknowledged it at the time in a background interview with New York Magazine. The official from Treasury said, and I’m quoting here, “If we’d been for it, it probably would have happened. But we weren’t, so it didn’t.” That’s power.

Mr. President, Democrats don’t like Wall Street bailouts. Republicans don’t like Wall Street bailouts. The American people are disgusted by Wall Street bailouts. And yet here we are — five years after Dodd-Frank – with Congress on the verge of ramming through a provision that would do nothing for middle class, do nothing for community banks – do nothing but raise the risk that taxpayers will have to bail out the biggest banks once again.

There’s a lot of talk lately about how the Dodd-Frank Act isn’t perfect. There’s a lot of talk coming from Citigroup about how the Dodd-Frank Act isn’t perfect.

So let me say this to anyone who is listening at Citi: I agree with you. Dodd-Frank isn’t perfect.

It should have broken you into pieces.

 Realities to ponder:

• It was Obama’s choice to give Citibank extraordinary power and influence in his administration.
• It was Obama’s choice to keep the Bush era architects of torture as close advisors.
• It was Obama’s choice to invite warmongering neocons into his administration.

It’s time for us to challenge bank-owned Democrats who spout progressive platitudes to the public while slavishly serving the interests of the elite. In a courageous act, Elizabeth Warren has taken the first step, and she is taking names.

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The short answer is the Fed has been propping up the stock market. And, high stock prices are not always tethered to traditional methods of stock valuation, like productivity, price, earnings, growth—all those “fundamentals” you learn about in the “Investing for Dummies” book. The market has become a highly manipulated gambling casino for the elite, where bank and hedge fund investors, high frequency traders, and the Fed’s massive injection of liquidity into the system have fueled a record-breaking, inflated, and unsustainable market.

Of course, if you are invested in this market—and a lot of working stiffs are—you have done well, but it’s a market without a foundation, a house built on sand. Unlike the wealthy, you probably can’t afford to lose your money when the market “corrects”—and it will.

These record-breaking Dow averages are not the result of the “invisible hand of the free market,” because there’s no such thing as a “free market.” Central banks around the world are injecting $200 billion into the system, per quarter, to avoid a market crash.

Tyler Durgen, at Zero Hedge, says that, “without the Fed’s (and all other central bank’s) liquidity pump, the S&P would be about 70% lower than where it is now.

Mike Whitney at Counterpunch writes: “. . . in the last five years, stocks have tripled because the Fed, has added a “hefty $4 trillion in red ink to its balance sheet. Naturally, when someone buys $4 trillion in financial assets, the price of financial assets goes up.”

Besides, the Fed doesn’t give a rip about the real economy. If it did, it would have loaded up on infrastructure bonds instead of funky mortgage backed securities (MBS). The difference between the two is pretty stark: Infrastructure bonds put people to work, circulate money, boost economic activity, and strengthen growth. In contrast, MBS purchases help to fatten the bank accounts of the fraudsters who created the financial crisis while doing bupkis for the economy. Guess whom the Fed chose to help out?

Whitney is talking about the Fed’s practice of Quantitative Easing (QE)— buying toxic assets from banks—and then lending money back at zero percent interest. This gives banks and hedge funds tons of free money with which to speculate. This same policy that enriches the already wealthy takes money out of the pockets of ordinary people who can’t earn any interest on their meager savings accounts.

The Fed announced on Wednesday, October 29, that it would end QE3, effectively removing one of the helium tanks from this inflated stock market. It remains to be seen how the markets will react.

While too big to fail banks are speculating like crazy, corporations are busy pumping stock prices. Instead of doing something constructive with the billions in cash they are sitting on, say, creating jobs here at home, executives are increasing share value (and the value of their stock options) by buying back company stock.

Back in the real world we are left with higher food prices and lower wages. The sticker shock you’ve been experiencing at the grocery store is not just because you shop at Whole Foods. In September, the BLS reported that the price of ground beef increased 17 percent since September of 2013.

The Obama administration claims credit for a lower unemployment rate, but it fails to mention that the jobs it helped create are mostly low paying, part time, or both. If you take a part-time, low-paying job, you are considered “employed,” so you fall off the rolls even though you can’t live on what you make. And, if you give up looking, as many have, you are no longer counted. The so-called lower unemployment rate in no way reflects the reality of the job market.

In April of this year, the New York Times reported the following:

The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants.

In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones. That is the conclusion of a new report from the National Employment Law Project, a research and advocacy group, analyzing employment trends four years into the recovery.

What this reality check tells you about our economy, our markets, and our banking system, is that they are rigged to benefit the elite. They are unstable, unsustainable, and do not serve the majority of working people. Fed policy is to give banks hundreds of billions in gambling money which does nothing for the real economy and further enriches the already rich. Meanwhile, 16 million American children live in poverty, and 1.3 million school children are homeless.

The next global “crash” will happen when international central bank manipulation of all varieties ceases to work. The phony economy, this “house of cards,” will fall, and bank balance sheets will go up in flames. Because banks are interconnected, when liquidity locks up, they will all go down together, and the markets and what’s left of the economy will go down with them. Some say the coming crash will make 2008 seem like a dress rehearsal. The wealthy, of course, will be fine, but ordinary people around the world will suffer.

Mike Whitney blames the surge in wealth at the top and the growing gap between the rich and poor on the Fed’s zero interest rate and QE policies put into place in 2008—policies deliberately designed to transfer money from the poor to the rich. In other words, the crushing of the working and the middle classes isn’t an accident; it’s a feature of an economy run by and for bankers and billionaires.

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