Today's Stories

February 20 / 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 20 / 22, 2009

How the Current Financial Rescue Schemes are Following the Failed Model of the Hoover Administration

Herbert Hoover Copycats

By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH

Faced with the financial meltdown of the Great Depression, the Hoover administration created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that poured taxpayers’ money into the coffers of the influential Wall Street banks in an effort to save them from bankruptcy. Like today’s Bush/Obama administrations, the Hoover administration used the “too-big-to-fail” scare tactic in order to justify the costly looting of the national treasury. All it did, however, was to simply postpone the day of reckoning: almost all of the banks failed after nearly three years of extremely costly bailouts schemes.

In a similar fashion, when in the mid- to late-1990s major banks in Japan faced huge losses following the bursting of the real estate and loan-pushing bubble in that country, the Japanese government embarked on a costly rescue plan of the troubled banks in the hope of “creating liquidity” and “revitalizing credit markets.” The results of the bailout plan have likewise been disastrous, a disaster that has come to be known as “Japan’s lost decade.”

Despite these painful and costly experiences, the Bush/Obama administrations (along with the U.S. Congress) are following similarly ruinous solutions that are just as doomed to fail. This is not because these administrations’ economic policy makers are unaware of the failed policies of the past. It is rather because they too function under the influence of the same powerful special interests that doomed the bailout policies of the Hoover and Japanese governments: the potent banking interests.

Despite its complexity, the fraudulently obfuscated and evaded solution to the currently crippled financial markets is not due to a lack of expertise or specialized technical know-how, as often claimed by economic policy makers of the Bush/Obama administrations. It is rather due to a shameful lack of political will—the solution is primarily political.

Specifically, it is due to government’s unwillingness to do what needs to be done: to remove the smokescreen that is suffocating the financial markets, open the books of the insolvent mega banks, declare them bankrupt, as they actually are, auction off their assets, and bring them under public ownership—since taxpayers have already paid for their net assets many times over.

To put it even more bluntly, the deepening and protraction of the crisis is largely due to policy makers’ subservience to the interests of Wall Street gamblers—shirking their responsibility to protect people’s interests.

Saying that the solution to the current financial crisis is simpler than it appears is not meant to downplay or make light of the problem. It is, rather, to point out that Wall Street gamblers have made the solution relatively simple by digging their own grave, doomed themselves to bankruptcy, thereby leaving nationalization as the only logical or viable solution.

This is no longer simply a radical, leftist or socialist demand. It is now demanded by many economists and financial experts on purely pragmatic or expediency grounds. For example, Joseph Stiglitz, the 2001 recipient of Nobel Prize in economics and former Chief Economist of the World Bank, points out:

 “The fact of the matter is, the banks are in very bad shape. The U.S. government has poured in hundreds of billions of dollars to very little effect. It is very clear that the banks have failed. American citizens have become majority owners in a very large number of the major banks. But they have no control. Any system where there is a separation of ownership and control is a recipe for disaster. Nationalization is the only answer. These banks are effectively bankrupt.”

Likewise, Mike Whitney, a very incisive Wall Street observer, writes:

“Most people who've been following the financial crisis know what needs to be done. It's no secret. The insolvent banks have to be nationalized. They have to be taken over by the FDIC, the shareholders have to be wiped out, bondholders have to take a haircut, management has to be replaced and the bad assets have to be written down. There's no point in throwing public money down a rathole just to keep zombie banks on life support.”

In Europe, which is similarly mired in a huge financial swamp, some policy makers are now openly calling for “Chapter 11” and/or nationalization solution. For example, in an article published in the 12 February 2009 edition of Corriere Della Sera, the Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti calls for a bankruptcy reorganization of the insolvent financial institutions:

"If the crisis is not a liquidity but an insolvency crisis..., the medicine is not merging failed banks with other failed banks, it is not in the switch or swap between private and public debt, it is not in creating artificial, additional private demand. If you are doped, the remedy is not more dope. . . . Saving everything is a divine mission. If one thinks to save everything, through the last resort of governments, through public debts, you end up with saving nothing and at the end, you even lose public budgets.”

As noted earlier, partisans of “bailout-the-banks-at-any-cost” use the “too-big-to-fail” scare tactic in order to justify trillions of giveaway bailout dollars. Disingenuously used for nearly 20 months since the financial bubble exploded in mid 2007, this rationale is now totally discredited, as the fraudulently shifting schemes of rescuing the insolvent banks have proven both ineffectual and dangerously costly—not only in terms of hollowing out our national treasury and condemning us to bankruptcy, but also in terms of further prolonging and deepening of the crisis.

Another bogus rationale for the shifting schemes of the bailout scam, according to its champions, is that “this is an altogether new and very complicated crisis.” Accordingly, they claim that “while we are committed to finding a solution, it will take a long time before we see a market turnaround because it is an unprecedented problem and may, therefore, involve lots of learning by doing”!

It is hard to say which is worse: (1) this is a sincere argument, that is, they are genuinely committed to finding a solution based on national interests but have not yet come up with one; or (2) they are disingenuous, and are deliberately engaged in obfuscating issues and confusing the people in order to protect the interests of Wall Street financial gamblers at the expense of national interests.

If they are right in their claim that they are genuinely committed to finding a solution based on national interests but have not yet found one (after nearly 20 months), then it is safe to say that they are a bunch of incompetent knotheads who are totally ignorant of the theoretical foundations and empirical lessons of bank failures and/or bank nationalizations, and should, therefore, not be at the helm of our economic decision-making apparatus. But if their argument is disingenuous, then they are playing politics with our national interests in order to serve special interests—a case of crime and punishment.

There are good reasons, however, to believe that the confusion and uncertainty that the Bush/Obama team of economic experts has created in the financial markets is largely due to these experts’ misplaced priorities and allegiance, not their “sincere but unsuccessful” efforts. It is a problem of having some huge elephants in our nation’s financial policy-making room. Mike Whitney aptly calls Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner “a Trojan Horse for the banking oligarchs”:

“The banking lobby has already set the agenda.  All the hoopla about ‘financial rescue’ is just a smokescreen to hide the fact that the same scofflaws who ripped off investors for zillions of dollars are back for their next big sting; a quick vacuuming of the public till to save themselves from bankruptcy. It's a joke. Obama floated into office on a wave of Wall Street campaign contributions and now it's payback time. Prepare to get fleeced. Geithner is fine-tuning a ‘public-private’ partnership for his buddies so they can keep their fiefdom intact while shifting trillions of dollars of toxic assets onto the people's balance sheet. They've affixed themselves to Treasury like scabs on a leper. Geithner is ‘their guy,’ a Trojan horse for the banking oligarchs. He's already admitted that his main goal is to, ‘keep the banks in private hands.’ That says it all, doesn't it?”

Timothy Geithner, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, and their cohorts at the helm of the Bush/Obama financial decision making machine are very smart individuals. They are among top Wall Street masterminds. The problem is that, at the core, they are committed, first and foremost, to protecting the interests of Wall Street financial giants. Indeed, it is safe to say that they are disguised lobbyists of those financial firms. No matter how hard they try to camouflage their bailout schemes, or how many different names they use for those schemes, their starting point is always protection of the insolvent banks.

Just note the fact that while they have changed the name of their bailout scam a number of times, the primary objective has not changed. The initial bailout plan, which announced the giving away of $700 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money, was called Troubled Assets Rescue Plan (TARP).

Half way through TARP, that is, when it became clear that Wall Street gamblers were simply grabbing TARP money and hoarding it, Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson repackaged the scheme and renamed it as taxpayers’ investment or purchase of “preferred shares of troubled institutions.” In plain language, this simply means paying “cash for trash,” as Michael Hudson, former Wall Street economist and Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri (Kansas City), aptly puts it. Furthermore, owning “preferred shares” of a bank means not having a say or an input in the control or management of the bank—that is, ownership without control.

As the American people have gradually become aware of and resistant to these fraudulent rescue plans, the schemers have become more cunning: they have now labeled the latest version of the bailout scam “private-public” investment partnership.

This “private-public” partnership scheme, as formally announced by the new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on 10 February 2009, is designed to accomplish two things: first, to justify the giving away of the remainder of the TARP money; second, to pave the way for additional bailout giveaways—purportedly to the tune of $2.5 trillion.

Formally, the “private” component in this so-called partnership investment means that hedge funds, private equity funds, and investment banks would now join the government in purchasing the toxic assets of the troubled banks. While this is designed to show that “private participation” in the rescue scheme would diminish the need for public money and, accordingly, reduce taxpayers’ burden, in reality, it would not; because the projected private investment is conditioned upon public funding and/or guarantees of that investment. In other words, the so-called private participation in the bailout scam is essentially a roundabout way of public funding of the scam.

To camouflage this pile of dirt, as well as to underhandedly pave the way for asking additional $2.5 trillion of public money for Wall Street’s zombie banks, was bound to make the “private-public” partnership scheme vague and unpersuasive. Not surprisingly, the moment Geithner announced the plan the market stampeded, as investors clearly saw right through the gaping holes of the Machiavellian plan—by the time Geithner was done with his press conference, the Dow Jones stocks fell 382 points.

A government “of the people, by the people, for the people” would start from the goal of finding a solution to the financial crisis that is based on national interests, and then would look at the implications of such a solution for the insolvent banks. Instead, the Bush/Obama administrations start from the objective of saving the insolvent banks, and then look for a “solution” that would accommodate this objective!

When asked why he was selecting an economic team of neoliberal economists who played critical roles in bringing about the current financial meltdown, President Obama gave a most bogus, obfuscating and, uncharacteristically stupid, reason: “I have to choose from the pool of experts who know how financial markets work.”

Yes, Mr. President, they certainly know how Wall Street financial giants work. The problem is that they are disguised lobbyists of those financial giants.

There is strong evidence that not only does President Obama’s team of economic advisors owe their professional advancement to the Wall Street cartel of financial firms, but also the President himself is greatly indebted to the cartel for its behind-the-scene promotion of his presidential candidacy, and for their generous contributions to his campaign. Contrary to Barack Obama’s claim that his campaign was not funded by Washington lobbyists, Evidence shows that the campaign “received over $10 million in contributions from Wall Street, the largest contributors by far.”

According to Pam Martin, a Wall Street veteran of 21 years and now an investigative reporter, the top seven donors to Obama’s campaign were Wall Street financial giants. These seven (in order of money given) were:

“Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street. There are five large corporate law firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumula­tive total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008, was $2,872,128, and we're still in the primary season.”

Political and/or policy implications for the American people are clear: Wake up before it is too late.

If this sounds conceited or condescending, I apologize. I have no doubts that the people will eventually wake up to the tremors of this brutal economic crisis—as many who have lost their jobs and their homes already have. The important thing, however, is to wake up now; to wake up before it is too late—before the rapidly gaping cracks in our economy turn it into a sinking Titanic.

It is time to wake up now before Wall Street Financial Giants and their government—yes, it is primarily their government—destroy our economy and bankrupt our nation in their reckless commitment to rescue financial zombie firms at any price.

There is, however, no reasonable price that can rescue the insolvent Wall Street gamblers; they have simply accumulated too much bad debt to be bailed out. The only price seems to be the further hollowing out of our treasury, the mortgaging of our (and our children’s) future, the worsening and prolonging of the crisis and, ultimately, the complete breakdown of our economy—and very likely of the entire world.

So, once again, it is time to rise up before it is too late; to rise up and demand (not beg or appeal to politicians, which has been proven to be futile) people’s rightful ownership of the insolvent banks, as we have already paid for their net assets many times over.

It is equally important to demand nationalization of the Federal Reserve Bank (just as central banks are publicly-owned in most countries of the world). There is absolutely no reason for a private entity (called the Federal Reserve Bank) to be in charge of the indisputably most important national economic decision-making: creation, control and management of the nation’s money. It is utterly preposterous for the government to have granted a private bank the right to print our money, and then borrow it back from the bank at interest! (Interest payment on national debt is the third largest item, after military spending and Social Security outlays, in the Federal budget.)

Once the all-important task of money creation is brought under public control, and the insolvent Wall Street zombie banks are nationalized, the government can then use the publicly-owned banks and issue loans at reasonable rates, thereby unfreezing credit markets and rekindling investment and economic activity.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of the recently published The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

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