[Marxism] The last hold-up

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch, October 1 , 2008
Crisis Time for Wall Street's Creatures in Congress
The Last Hold Up

By GLEN FORD

In their role as mercenaries in service of finance capital, three-fifths 
of Democrats joined one-third of Republicans in a (temporarily) failed 
heist of $700 billion of the people's funds - a nest-egg the public 
needs to hold onto to weather the unfolding collapse of the Lords of 
Capital. In the aftermath of Monday's bloody siege, it was difficult to 
tell who Wall Street guns-for-hire John McCain and Barack Obama hated 
most: each other, or the citizens who despite their outraged confusion 
had the presence of mind to bar the doors to the national treasury.

Understandably disoriented from having had to charge backwards - 
pretending to lead the people while simultaneously assaulting them - 
Obama peered across the field at the hastily-erected barricades that had 
broken Hank Paulson's Charge.  "I'm confident we're going to get there," 
said the frustrated thief-enabler, "but it's going to be rocky."
To paraphrase Oscar Brown, Jr., "What you mean WE, Obama-man?"

The Illinois senator and his pretend-opponents in the other business 
party just had their colluding asses kicked by the most motley, 
disorganized crew imaginable: the American public, who bombarded their 
legislators with threats of retaliation in November if they bowed to 
Wall Street's extortionist demands.

Never has Republican-Democratic co-subservience to finance capital been 
on such naked display. But then, "We the People" have never before been 
witness to the terminal unraveling of late-stage global finance capital. 
When the New York Times features no less than three articles declaring 
the nation's investment bankers ready for burial, as did last Sunday's 
paper, it is time for the Democrats, especially, to find another paymaster.

Black Caucus Split

Obama's party is wedded to Wall Street. At the local level the Democrats 
have long been the party of "developers" - the money bags who shape 
urban policy to fit the needs of corporations. These gentrifiers are the 
"Renaissance Men" that insist black politicians earn their campaign and 
graft payments by helping to expel their own constituents from the 
cities, so as to make them more congenial to business. Betrayal starts 
at home.  So it's not surprising to find Rep. Charles Rangel (NY), the 
corporate-loving Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, among 
the 18 members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to vote with the 
Bush-McCain-Obama Wall Street axis. Edolphus Towns (NY), Gregory Meeks 
(NY), and Artur Davis (AL) are also in their element, reeking as they do 
of corporate contributions. However, it is strange - and sad - to see 
Maxine Waters (CA), Gwen Moore (WI) and other relatively progressive 
members aligned with the rump end of the Black Caucus.

Among the slim, 21-member majority of the CBC that defied Speaker Nancy 
Pelosi's edicts, one finds more curious company. Voting alongside 
usually reliable progressives such as Barbara Lee (CA), John Conyers 
(MI), Donna Edwards (MD) and Bobby Scott (VA), are some of the Caucus's 
most rightwing members: William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson (LA) and David 
Scott (GA), once described as the "Worst Black Congressman" in the 
House. Panic makes strange bedfellows.
Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott summed up the "No" position: "There's no point 
in spending all this money on worthless assets" such as toxic mortgages. 
Detroit's Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick said of the Paulson plan, "This 
helps the banks in their book of mortgages. It doesn't help the little 
person who needs it."

These are eminently good reasons to resist the bipartisan, flag-waving, 
hyper-ventilating and increasingly ill-looking Wall Street mob, now 
regrouping for another bum-rush of the Congress. However, the anxious 
thieves are only a 12-vote switch away from consummating the Greatest 
Theft Ever. Pelosi's wing of the Business Party is confident they can 
assemble the blandishments and threats to do the trick.

The Last Hold-up

The criminal-minded and mortally wounded Lords of Capital believed, as 
Pam Martens has written, that they could "loot and collapse a 200-year 
old financial system and...be rewarded with a fresh $700 billion of 
public money to disperse among your cronies who aided and abetted in the 
collapse."

Or, as Mike Whitney puts it:

     "...the $700 billion is just part of a massive ‘pump and dump' 
scheme engineered with the tacit approval of the US Treasury and the 
Federal Reserve. Once the banksters have offloaded their fraudulent 
securities and crappy paper on Uncle Sam, they will do whatever they 
need to do to pad the bottom line and drive their stocks up. That means 
they will shovel capital into hard assets, foreign currencies, gold, 
interest rate swaps, carry trade swindles, and Swiss bank accounts. The 
notion that they will recapitalize so they can provide loans to US 
consumers and businesses in a slumping economy is a pipedream."

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his designated wrecking crew have 
but one objective: theft. Their own world is doomed - "The system is 
de-leveraging and nothing can stop it," says Whitney - so they are 
pulling off one last, mega-heist before it sinks beneath the waves.

The rest of us must fashion new institutions to perform the societal 
tasks that were purportedly the domain of the now-extinct investment 
bankers: to gather large amounts of capital for projects of social value 
- for example, a Marshall-type Plan for the cities, a nationwide 
infrastructure makeover, and fulfillment of the 70-year old federal 
commitment to provide truly affordable housing for everyone. And of 
course, jobs, jobs, jobs.

We have many other uses for that $700 billion - what Barack Obama called 
"our last bullet," although intending to make it a gift to mega-thieves 
- for instance, to provide relief to current and future homeowner (and 
rental) victims of the housing bubble that will take years to fully 
deflate, as prices (and rents) decrease to levels consistent with wages 
and other social factors.

In a perverse way, Henry Paulson and his co-conspirators have done the 
public a great favor. He has told us that, Yes, the federal government 
can come up with $700-plus billion, in an instant, if the health of the 
nation demands it. He has expanded the fiscal scope of the domestic 
political debate, so that it may encompass projects of transformational 
size. Never again can the corporate class speak of socially valuable 
projects being so large as to "break the bank" or the budget. Popular 
forces are now free to think large, too, without being ridiculed from 
the corporate Right.

The demise of finance capital's premiere institutions, and the brutal 
arrogance with which their servants moved to strip the commonweal of 
every squeezable drop of cash, has alerted vast sectors of the citizenry 
to the reality of capitalism-in-crisis in ways that no amount of Left 
agitation could have accomplished.

Technical public "ownership" of previously "private" institutions has 
been thrust upon us by the capitalists, themselves. But this is merely 
an opening for the great debates and struggles that must follow. Power 
does not devolve to "the people" by simple virtue of majority shares in 
failing institutions or even outright nationalization. And "the people" 
have no need of institutions that serve no purpose but as creatures of 
capital.

The second casualty of the current crisis, after the collapse of the 
financial sector, is surely the twin-party game of musical chairs that 
served to legitimize the rule of capital. The obscenity of a 
Democrat-Republican syndicate arrayed against the roaring, raging 
sentiments of citizens of all self-described political persuasions, 
cannot be erased from the collective national memory - even if 
congressional party leaders succeed in whipping their members into line, 
later this week.

When catastrophe hits, radicals must be ready. Recent events have proven 
Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente to be amazingly prescient in their 
belief that the Green Party can be - I emphasize can be - a vehicle for 
presenting and popularizing a truly transformational program for social 
change. (See McKinney "The Financial Crisis: Seize the Time!" BAR 
September 24.) McKinney and Clemente always intended that the Green 
Party become a nexus for the roiling social currents set in motion by 
the decomposition of ruling class institutions. The Democratic and 
Republican Parties, creatures of capital, are decomposing in full view, 
as witnessed by the events of this week. As the crisis deepens, the 
parties will crack - at a pace dictated by the increasing frequency of 
convulsions.

When we are confronted with the surreal spectacle of John McCain and 
Barack Obama attempting to destroy each other even as they rush to 
deliver nearly a trillion dollars to the same master, while the people 
scream at both of them to "Stop!" - we know that "change" is coming. But 
not the kind the Democrats or Republicans anticipate.

Glen Ford is executive editor of Black Agenda Report, where this article 
also appears. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com.