The author of the following article, Paul Craig Roberts, was a member of Ronald Reagan's "economic management" team.
For the last several years, Roberts has been critical of both parties. "He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for (the Republican Party), avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Craig_Roberts
Roberts' article, "Totally Corrupt America," reprises "Inside Job," an Oscar-winning documentary that documents high-rolling American capitalists becoming so traitorously malevolent by 2008 that the economy had to fall apart because the movers and shakers exploded it from within.
Wherever "big deals" go boom, "insiders" pocket everything that falls from the piñata.
Failure to watch this movie - which is freely available at http://vimeo.com/23086688 - reveals an "intellectual flat-liner," or a "true believer" determined to protect The Central Dogma of American "Conservatism" - that Unregulated Capitalism is the only possible framework for "free" "democracy." (For even better capitalist frameworks, see
Despite the debacle of inadequate regulation that became apparent in 2008, the American "Right" continues to champion deregulated capitalism.
Are we to believe that even more mortgage robo-signing -- and more unverified consumer declarations of annual earnings -- define the way to prosperity?
Revealingly the free marketeers who deliberately trashed the economy are prepared -- even eager -- to sacrifice G.M., AIG, Goldman Sachs etc on the altar of bankruptcy, refusing to recognize one bedrock truth.
The real culprits are not the companies themselves.
And for management, it doesn't matter much if the company goes bankrupt.
The only meaningful outcome of bankruptcy is that workers lose jobs and retirees their pension plans.
The real culprits in this mobius scam are solipsistically-self-centered capitalists who use corporations as "shields" to protect themselves from repercussion.
As long as "corporations" diffuse public hostility, the fat cats who "guide" these corporations remain unaccountable and unpunished.
With malice aforethought, these profligate profiteers plunged Main Street America into a matrix of diminished net worth, evaporated pension plans and lousy job prospects, while they themselves exited the wreckage, lucre in hand, perfectly content that their corporate shells collapse around them so long as it distracts mainstream attention from their relentless malfeasance.
In Spanish-speaking societies, the phrase for corporation" is "Sociedad Anónima" -- "Anonymous Society." As the words make clear, corporations are legally structured to insure that NO EXECUTIVE bears ANY personal responsibility.
Ever.
As far as plutocrats are concerned, the purpose of a corporate shell is to encourage such extraordinary recklessness that even when corporations fail, the fat cat profit pool will be enormous.
If nothing else, just load up the company with debt and then pay yourself huge bonuses out of the borrowed money.
And so, while the Citizens United ruling invests corporations with "personhood," the executives who actually comprise corporate management are given a carte blanche to do whatever they want. They are "anonymous." They are effectively de-personalized. (This game now has an official name: "The Privatization of Profits; The Socialization of Loss" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatizing_profits_and_socializing_losses)
Magnates don't need General Motors.
They don't need AIG.
They don't need Goldman Sachs.
So long as the fat cats are not held personally responsible, they are delighted to re-launch another generation of boom/bust scamming with a brand new corporate shell to hide their central intent.
Until the next bust.
Repeat cycle.
The corporate shells that shelter these felons are interchangeable devices in a shell game that will continue -- first in one guise, then in another -- so long as Americans vilify corporations and not the inordinately wealthy people who head them.
Woodrow Wilson observed, "The truth is we are all caught in a system which is heartless."
Canada is no longer heartless.
Europe is no longer heartless.
Australia is no longer heartless.
Japan is no longer heartless.
New Zealand is no longer heartless.
Costa Rica is no longer heartless!
Apparently, the United States will just have to settle for being #1. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all
Go team.
***
Totally Corrupt America By Paul Craig Roberts October 24, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Last March I reviewed Matt Taibbi’s important book Griftopia, an entertaining account of the through-going financial fraud that gave us the financial crisis. Taibbi shows that the US “superpower” can match any third world backwater in the magnitude of greed and fraud that is endemic in business and government. Taibbi’s Griftopia was published last year. This year Henry Holt publishers have provided us with Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner’s Reckless Endangerment. Morgenson and Rosner tell the story again, but with less drama and provocation. Possibly, it might be more acceptable to those gullible Americans who wrap themselves in the flag and refuse to believe that their country could ever knowingly do anything that is wrong. I am not suggesting that Morgenson and Rosner pull their punches. To the contrary, the authors deliver enough knockouts to be contenders with Taibbi as world champions in exposing the reckless fraud that the US financial sector and its regulators now epitomize. The financial crisis, which is very much still with us, did not result from accident or miscalculation; neither did it result because of a flaw in Alan Greenspan’s theory, as he told Congress when a feeble effort was made to hold him accountable. It was the intentional result of people motivated by short-term profits who wanted to get theirs and get out. As Reckless Endangerment shows, fraud characterized every stage of the process from the fraudulent borrower incomes and credit scores that mortgage issuers gave to unqualified buyers, through the securitization of the mortgages and their triple-A investment grade ratings by the rating agencies (Standard & Poor’s especially, but also Moody’s and Fitch) to the investment banks that sold what the banks knew was junk to investors around the world as investment grade securities. Indeed, Goldman Sachs was simultaneously betting against the mortgage derivatives that it was selling to clients. Investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which once considered it a matter of honor to represent the interests of customers, took advantage of the trust that had been built up in the past to commit fraud against customers in order to advance the banks’ short-term profits and the out-sized multi-million dollar managerial bonuses that these fraudulent profits produced. Morgenson and Rosner provide a number of unique accounts of how those benefitting from fraud were able to defeat laws that were passed that would have held them to account. For example, the state of Georgia passed perfect legislation that held predatory lending to account. William J. Brennan Jr. and Georgia Governor Roy E. Barnes got the Georgia Fair Lending Act through the state legislature. It was a model for other states. As the federal regulators had thrown in the towel, the state laws would have prevent the worst part of the financial crisis, it not prevented the crisis altogether. The Georgia law only lasted a few months, because the rating agencies saw that their enormous profits from issuing fraudulent investment grade ratings were threatened by the law. The corrupt rating agencies mischaracterized the consumer protection act as a jihad by regulators. Standard & Poor’s declared that it would no longer allow Georgia mortgages to be placed in mortgage securities that it rated. In other words, Georgia mortgages could no longer be securitized. This announcement banned Georgia mortgage lenders from securitization. Thus, the law was overturned, and fraud ran wild. These kind of mafia strong-armed tactics in order to protect at all costs the short-term mega-bonuses that drove the totally fraudulent system have never been held accountable or punished. Totally innocent people are held indefinitely and tortured by the US government for no other reason than to convince the gullible public that they are endangered by terrorists, but those who wiped out the home ownership and retirement pensions of millions of Americans now hold high and honorable positions on corporate boards and US regulatory agencies. Federal regulatory agencies totally failed. Brooksley Born tried to use her statutory authority to regulate over-the-counter derivatives, but she was blocked by the Federal Reserve chairman, the US Treasure secretary, and the SEC chairman and forced to resign. As University of Chicago Nobel economist George Stigler predicted, regulatory agencies are captured by those who are intended to be regulated. This was the case. Regulators turned a blind eye to obvious criminal fraud, and were rewarded with lucrative positions in the financial community. The same for the US senators and representatives who repealed Glass-Steagal and other financial regulations. For example, former US senator Phil Gramm who spearheaded the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, the repeal of which set up the financial crisis, was rewarded by being made vice chairman of the mega-bank UBS, a Swiss global financial services company. What Taibbi, Morgenson and Rosner make clear is that while monster criminals continue to collect their multi-million dollar annual incomes, depressed single mothers, deserted by the men who fathered their child, are sent to prison for having small quantities of illegal drugs to boost their depressed spirits, and their children are put out to adoption. This is “justice” in America where there is “freedom and democracy.” Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com  |
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