The Greed Game
The insanity manifests itself.
Banksters
Done your laundry?
” Depending on which international agency you ask, criminals launder anywhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion worldwide every year. The global effect is staggering in social, economic and security terms.
. . .
Developing countries often bear the brunt of modern money laundering because the governments are still in the process of establishing regulations for their newly privatized financial sectors. This makes them a prime target. ”
Rumors relating to money laundering and connections between the fallen banks and the Russian mob continue. It is told that these are so ’embarrassing’ and reach so high up in the ranks and across boarders, that it will be about the last ‘material’ to be uncovered, – if at all.
In the meantime, low-level bank-employees are being investigated where the sums of money allegedly embezzled are in the range normal people can identify with.
No wonder that people delighted in the story about Tony Musulin – Best Thief of the Year 2009.
No Such Thing as a Random Sample
Opinion Makers are preparing a “National Assembly” (whole 0.3%) to flash out ideas of how we should mark our future after the horrific failure in our past.
At first look this appears to be a grand idea, Democracy at Work, – finally.
The selection process has been trumpeted as random sample out of the National Registry, i.e “having no definite aim or purpose; not sent or guided in a particular direction; made, done, occurring, etc., without method or conscious choice; haphazard”.
To start off, large sections of people have opted out of being included in ‘samples’ of any kind and the rest just don’t bother or have no knowledge of the possibility. People of foreign nationality although legible to vote in local elections automatically drop out, a primitive ‘random’ record collector is used, and there are many more limitations on the ‘randomness’.
Then there is the simple question of the organizers, who are they (Chamber of Commerce?), and the question who decided on those, who are the specially preselected representatives of special interests, and who decided on the general framework of the meting (consumer panels)?
So we are back to the “Propaganda model”, Agenda Setting by Predetermine, Select, Shape, Control and Restrict by: Selection of Topics, Distribution of Concerns, Emphasis, Framing of Issues, Filtering of Information and Bounding of Debate
To each according to his greed
“The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable. Recall the demonstrations that throughout the last decade regularly accompanied meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank: the protesters’ complaints encompassed not only the usual antiglobalization motifs (the growing exploitation of Third World countries, etc.) but also how the banks were creating the illusion of growth by playing with fictional money and how this would all have to end in a crash. It was not only economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz who warned of the dangers ahead and made it clear that those who promised continuous growth did not really understand what was going on under their noses. In Washington in 2000, so many people demonstrated about the danger of a financial collapse that the city had to mobilize 3,500 local policemen. What ensued was tear–gassing, clubbing, and mass arrests. The police were used to stifle the truth.” – Slavoj Zizek – Democracy Now! & Harper’s Magazine
Opposite Land
Now that the banks that were created by and for fishermen, farmers, small industry and shopkeepers are no longer in our hands it is interesting to listen to the rhetoric.
The echo-chamber parrots the mantra about the benevolent foreign investor/creditor as being our heavenly Saviour and the mercy-full grace that we should be so lucky to have them.
In 1984 as in 2009; War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength
The new rules of news – Dan Gillmor
“You may have noticed – you could hardly miss it – the blizzard of anniversary stories last month about the fall of Lehman Brothers, an event that helped spark last year’s financial meltdown. The coverage reminded me that journalists failed to do their jobs before last year’s crisis emerged, and have continued to fail since then.
It also reminds me of a few pet peeves about the way traditional journalists operate. So here’s a list of 22 things, not in any particular order, that I’d insist upon if I ran a news organization.” guardian.co.uk
Who pays for corporate welfare?
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Surviving the Cataclysm
Webster Griffin Tarpley predicted our current economic meltdown in his book Surviving the Cataclysm (1999). In this second edition he continues his analysis of the “globalized hot money casino run by a tiny financier oligarchy”.
Tarpley calls for “wiping out derivatives, banning foreclosures, and nationalizing the failed Federal Reserve System”.
The Silence of the Web
The latest trend in our ‘democratic’ and ‘crime free’ society is the hostility expressed towards bloggers / reporters. The self appointed ‘elite’, financial or otherwise, id est those who have acceptable opinions are mightily indignant over inappropriate comments and leaks in the blogger sphere and want it stopped. The old tools they are so grief-stricken for are the mass media, proper academics and of course their legal technicians (as they are now called).
I my self find Chomsky’s explanations illuminating when he writes: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz will be here over the weekend.
Is he a true insider convert from the past or is he just trying to restore faith in his masters? – The Central bank didn’t listen to him in 2001, maybe it should have?
Until then take a look at this.
“Market Fundamentalism Is Dead”
Or this Greg Palast report for BBC Newsnight
Finally his lecture here (not omf)