Three weeks before the full-scale pillage began of tax-payers money by the U.S. Treasury chief, Naomi Klein predicted in her THE NATION editorial, “The Bailout” equals “Bush’s final pillage”.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081117/klein
Klein implied that it was all this financial bail-out talk was simply a last minute push to ensure that American’s could never pay for universal health care and that the Bush Republicans could pay off for decades the Bush family political base before leaving office—at ours and our great-grandchildren’s expense.
Last Monday, Klein was on DEMOCRACY NOW, where she noted, “[I]f we think about what this money means, and this is—you know, this crisis isn’t over, and the same people who justified this bailout, who clamored for this bailout, are the very people who are going to turn around and say to Barack Obama, ‘We can’t afford for you to make good on your election promises. We can’t afford universal healthcare. In fact, we can’t afford what meager services Americans get in exchange for their tax dollars, like Social Security payments.’ We’re already hearing this lowering of expectations now in the national discourse. So, the money—this really is, you know, reverse Robin Hood gone mad. The money has been given to the people who needed it least, and it’s going to be used to justify austerity measures imposed against those who need it most. It’s going to be used to justify cuts to food stamps. It’s going to be used to justify cuts to Social Security, to healthcare, let alone being used to justify why more ambitious plans for a national healthcare program, for green energy are not affordable. So people have to be ready for this. You know, the next shock is yet to come.”
Klein noticed clearly that what has occurred since September 2008 is that the U.S. Treasury is being privatized—is being given over to the private sector, just as our military was privatized and has been run under the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld White House.
Naomi Klein rightly critiques this as one of the worst monitored financial bail-outs in history.
She has explained clearly that what has been handed out so generously to banks in recent weeks is similar to when the George W. Bush waltzed American armed forces into Iraq--and gave away no-bid contracts running into the hundreds of billion to all his election base and cronies of all types—i.e. all at the U.S. taxpayers expense.
“The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington’s handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal,” says Naomi Klein.
WHY AREN’T AMERICANS SCREAMING AT WASHINGTON?
Since I heard this interview on Democracy Now with Naomi Klein five days ago, I have been awaiting the scene of millions of Americans hitting the streets and demanding that the Lame Duck Congress take back the reigns of the bailout from the abusive Bush administration and appointees.
Where are all other leaders in America who have had it up to their necks in robbing from the poor and giving to the rich?
The silence at the crime scene in America this Thanksgiving Week is astounding.
Please Dr. Krugman, help Americans find a voice and help demand that many banks really be run right or sold to the government. Up till now we have only seen these bailed-out institutions fail to make good loans, fail to run themselves well and fail to offer decent interest rates for savers.
Meanwhile our treasury is run by banking and financial old-boys school folks who haven’t got a clue---except as to how to make a buck for cronies.
In conclusion, America doesn’t need mega-banks, impersonal banks. We need good banks that deal with us all like we are valuable social creatures that make up society.
Please, Dr. Krugman, shout out and demand a meeting with Bush and with Obama--and offer immediately to take over both the treasury and economic planning in America for the weeks until Obama takes over and enough good & trustworthy replacements can be found.
