Obama's economic agenda: a timely review
Richard Moore
Obama has moved very quickly to get his programs off the ground. With
previous Presidents, we needed go give them the standard 100 days, or
so, before they got their team organized and began submitting their
bills to Congress. With Obama's intensive transition period, his
dynamism, and his recruitment of seasoned veterans, he's been able to
launch, or at least announce, his primary programs in a matter of only
a few weeks.
Already he's gotten a very major bill through Congress, and he's
dispatched envoys to foreign capitals, bringing messages of new
beginnings, and expressing a desire for more cooperative
relationships. He's also reorganized the White House, with a stronger
National Security Council, an Internet outreach bureau, another bureau
for religion, and several other innovations.
We can now see Obama's agenda rather clearly, and given the
seriousness of our problems, the agenda deserves serious examination.
If you've been thinking, "Let's wait and see", our waiting period has
gone by in a flash, and now it's time to look at what we're facing.
Our biggest immediate crisis is the collapse of the financial system,
and so Obama's economic agenda is the best place to start our
examination. The New York Times gave a reasonable overview of the
agenda in this article of February 12th:
Deal Reached in Congress on $789 Billion Stimulus Plan
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newslog/message/1594
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/us/politics/12stimulus.html
Fiscal considerations: austerity and the chains of debt
The stimulus package, as we read in the NY Times, allocates $789
billion for recovery, some for programs, and some in tax reductions.
Meanwhile Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, announced that an
additional $2.5 trillion would be allocated to the insolvent banks.
That means we're taking on an additional national debt of $3.2
trillion, with over 75% of that going directly to the banks.
The decision to pursue the bailout scheme in this way cannot be called
an inheritance from the Bush administration. The funds disbursed under
Bush were on a more modest scale, and Obama actively supported that
part of the bailout. Obama has dramatically increased the bailout
amount, and the whole bailout scheme must be seen a primary part of
the agenda of Obama's own administration. He inherited the collapse,
but he wasn't obligated to pursue the solution he is pursuing.
What does it mean for the Treasury to go into debt for an additional
$3.2 trillion? We need to take into account that the US already had a
large national debt, the largest in the world, and that it was already
running high budget deficits and high trade deficits, all of this
before the collapse, the bailout, or the recession. One does not need
to be an economist, or have a crystal ball, to see that America will
be on its knees financially. With a global recession underway, and no
hope of early recovery, this is the very worst time, from a fiscal
point of view, to take on major additional debt.
With continuing foreign wars and the additional repayment burden,
America will only be able to operate by running record budget deficits
for the foreseeable future. And we need to understand that such
borrowing can only happen if the credit is available. Obama blithely
spends $3.2 trillion, and we might assume the government can do that
any time it wants, but that's not true. Without the cooperation of the
Federal Reserve and its international cohorts, neither the bailout nor
the recovery plan could have been pursued.
There is one other way the US can fund its deficits, and that is by
having the Federal Reserve simply print money, with no kind of
backing. But again, this requires the agreement of the privately-owned
Fed, and it results in Treasury debt, just as if the money had been
borrowed legitimately. Such a policy would also be inflationary,
perhaps leading to Weimar-style hyper-inflation. Nonetheless, Geithner
is ready to print money if other funding can't be found, as we read in
the NY Times on February 11:
Bailout Plan: $2.5 Trillion and a Strong U.S. Hand
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newslog/message/1585
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/business/economy/11bailout.html
In Ireland, where similar bailout schemes have been implemented, the
government has been quite candid about the implications of such a debt-
burdened scenario. Brian Cowan tells us that the Irish treasury, in
order to fund its future deficits, will need to be "attractive as an
investment", that Ireland will need to have its "house in order". As
his first step in "putting the house in order", Cowan cut 2 billion
Euro from the public services budget, including a steep wage cut for
public workers (disguised as a pension levy).
Whether your house is "in order" or not, is a decision made by the
bankers. They look at your budget, and they decide if you're spending
your money on the 'right things'. Debt repayments are of course always
welcome, and infrastructure projects are OK too, if they are
privatized, yielding profits for corporations and investors. But as
the Irish government now knows, and as the third world has known for
decades, public services and entitlements are "fiscally
irresponsible", and grounds for denying credit. If you want more
money, strict austerity must be enforced in your budget. It's the same
everywhere:
Iceland: New government pledges continuation of IMF austerity programme
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/icel-f11.shtml
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newslog/message/1586
In the days just prior to cutting 2 billion from the budget, the Irish
government gave away 200 billion to a few of its banks, and in the
days following the budget cut they gave other banks an additional 20
billion or so. But as regards the meagre 2 billion, Brian Cowan told
us on TV, in his blustery way, "We have no choice, the money simply
isn't there". An ordinary citizen is entitled to ask, "Where's the
logic here? How can they find endless pounds for the banks, but no
pence for the people?" This is no ordinary logic, and it isn't even
the standard scratch-my-back logic of politicians. It's the cold logic
of the banker, who traditionally and routinely puts families out on
the street if they don't make their mortgage payments.
In America, Obama tells us a different-sounding story, a more
promising one, than we hear from Brian Cowan. And instead of budget
cuts in the headlines, we read about a multi-billion dollar stimulus
program, and our leader is smiling, while Cowan scowls. In America
there is hope, in Ireland gloom and anger. But is there really any
difference between the financial circumstances in the USA and Ireland?
And is there any reason to expect different logic to govern the budget?
If we look at the numbers, conditions are fiscally worse in America
than in Ireland, as regards level of ongoing expenditures (eg, Iraq &
Afghanistan), level of debt (now increased by $3.2 trillion), and
level of ongoing deficits. And Obama has made it clear that this big
stimulus program is a one-time thing; after that the fiscal house must
be put back in order. On January 7, the NY Times expressed it this way
(emphasis added): "Mr. Obama sought to distinguish between the need to
run what is likely to be record-setting deficits for several years and
the necessity to begin bringing them down markedly in subsequent years."
Obama Warns of Prospect for Trillion-Dollar Deficits
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/politics/07obama.html
In case there is any doubt on this matter, we have this report, of
February 9th:
"Obamas chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, appearing on the
Fox television networks Sunday news program, assured moderator Chris
Wallace that any remaining relief measures for the unemployed or other
increases in social spending would not become permanent programs, but
would be rescinded once the crisis had abated."
Obamas economic stimulus paves way for multi-trillion-dollar
handout to the banks
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/pers-f09.shtml
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newslog/message/1566
In America, as in Ireland, the banks are giving the go-ahead for a one
time extravaganza of government borrowing, leading to astronomical
treasury debt and huge budget deficits for the foreseeable future. In
both cases there is a commitment to put the budget in order afterwards
so that the deficits can be funded. In both cases the orderliness of
the budget will be judged by the bankers; the deficits can only be
financed with their cooperation. And the scenario is the same
throughout the West, in Europe, Canada, and Australia, all of whose
governments are responding to the collapse in similar ways.
Wherever the global bankers have gotten this kind of debt stranglehold
anywhere in the world, brutal austerity and reckless privatization has
been the formula they have imposed. This has led not only to general
economic suffering and poverty, but also to social destabilization,
political corruption, the impoverishment and disempowerment of
governments, and the increased concentration of local wealth into the
hands of local elites / collaborators.
The agenda of the bankers in these cases has never been to finance the
country into recovery, but rather to make sure the country stays in
debt and under the thumb of the global banking elite and the IMF. The
payoff for the bankers comes not so much from the debt repayments,
which are in arrears more often than not, but rather from the
investment opportunities that are created. When a country is kept down
economically, investors can buy up its resources at bargain prices and
export them to the highest global bidder. They can exploit the land
and water to produce food for affluent markets around the world. And
privatization provides profitable infrastructure investments, enabling
still more wealth to be siphoned out of the country, as the
infrastructures are made available on an unregulated, pay-for-use basis.
We now have a situation where most of the third world is being
imperialized and exploited, much like it was in the days of the great
European empires. But instead of the nations being kept under the boot
of an imperial power and its fleet, the nations are kept in bondage by
the chains of debt. As John Perkins documents from his own experience,
in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, this program of debt-enabled,
bank-managed imperialism has been an intentional and systematic elite
project for decades throughout the third world. Where nations were
able to resist the seduction of offered credit, the State Department
or the CIA would typically find a way to intervene, overtly or
covertly, making it an offer you can't refuse.
The same elite bankers who have all the time been running this debt-
based system of power and profit, routinely employing underhanded
methods to get their way, have now managed to install one of their own
inner circle, Timothy Geithner, as head of the US Treasury. He then
promptly proceeded to give $2.5 trillion to his cronies and add $3.2
trillion to America's debt, which will cause unprecedented budget
deficits for many years to come.
The banking elite knew very well that the bubbles were going to burst,
and that the over-extended credit system would come tumbling down,
even while they were assuring us otherwise. When the collapse came,
they were ready with a coordinated story to tell the various
governments, an urgent scare story, about the banks being too
important to fail, and there being no alternative but to bail them
out, whatever the cost. In the urgency of the moment there was no time
for debate, no opportunity for any other solutions to be explored, and
no real examination of the inevitable consequences. Indeed, the banks
still haven't managed to calculate just how insolvent they are. The
whole collapse-bailout scenario was a carefully orchestrated coup:
They Did It On Purpose (Richard Cook)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10654
https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/newslog/2008-10/msg00133.html
By these means the USA has been sold into perpetual debt bondage. The
methods long employed in the imperial periphery have been brought
across the Rubicon and are now being applied to Rome itself. And with
slight variation from place to place, the same debt bondage has been
successfully imposed throughout the West. Already social service
budgets are being cut around the world, while trillions are still
flowing to the banks, as the cold hand of banker's logic settles in
and gathers all of us into its greedy grasp.
Debt bondage does not mean there's no money, or no wealth spread
around, it just means that money and wealth are allocated by the logic
of the bankers. And not just ordinary bankers, but the top Wall Street
clique and their cronies who control global finance and operate a
system of global imperialism. If they want to spend trillions on
exotic weaponry and military adventures, in support of their
imperialist operations, the money is readily available, and some of us
get good jobs making weapons. If they don't feel like spending money
on unemployment benefits, we won't get any. And every penny they do
allocate increases our debt bondage.
Whether Obama is secretly a party to this enslavement-by-debt program,
or whether he's simply chosen the wrong advisors, doesn't really make
any difference to our situation. For whatever reason he has fully
committed himself to Geithner's agenda, and he is using his best
rhetorical skill to sell that agenda. He is either an agent of the
banking elite, or he's unwittingly serving as their very effective
tool. In either case, in evaluating the Obama Presidency, the
responsibility for the sell-out of America must be laid at his door.
The collapse of the banking system was a painful body blow. Obama's
response to it, the bailout, amounts to an overdose of morphine. Not a
very sensible response to a body blow. A temporary release from pain,
and then the game is over. The obvious and sensible response to the
collapse is right there in front of us, the elephant in the room:
liquidation. The owners of the banks have run them into the ground. As
is normal with any other failed business, the assets should be
liquidated at the current market value, and the creditors and
stockholders should share in the depleted proceeds. Then the banks
should be started up again and recapitalized, under a new,
accountable, ownership arrangement, and free of toxic assets.
Government intervention in the standard liquidation process would of
course be required. So that banking services could continue without
interruption, the switchover would need to be very rapid, just as the
bailout was put through rapidly. The government would need to invest
capital, but it would be much less than the bailout, and the
government could ensure that the money is used to make sensible loans
to get the main street economy moving again. And the government would
get its investment back, as a stockholder and board member in the
viable new banks. There would be no assumption of unrepayable debt, no
debt bondage. The national interest cries out for this obvious response.
It is a testament to the power of the Wall Street folks, with their
tentacles into the media and into the political parties, that no
government official and no media pundit ever mentioned the obvious
elephant in the room. These folks all know how the business world
works, and the liquidation option had to pop into their minds, at
least fleetingly, when they heard the phrase "failed banks". They all
knew about the elephant. Perhaps the more apt metaphor is that they
didn't want to be the only one to point out that the emperor was
wearing no clothes. Whatever the circumstances, it's not wise to
undermine the emperor, the master of the universe, the almighty powers
of finance. One must consider ones career.
The only people who lose big under liquidation, and the only people
who win big with the bailouts, are the bankers. We are the big losers
and Obama is our smiling and beloved leader. What is wrong with this
picture? His oath of office was to defend the Constitution, and ensure
the welfare of the nation, not to pursue the interests of the Wall
Street banking elite. Instead, regardless of motive, every word from
his mouth, and his every action, serve those Wall Street interests and
not the national interests, or the interests of the people.
The Stimulus Package: lots of investments in all the wrong places
The much-heralded stimulus package serves as a convenient and
relatively inexpensive distraction from the $3.2 trillion of
indebtedness, and at the same time it conforms to the spending
priorities of banker's logic. Apart from some one-off tax cuts, and
some one-off gifts to Social Security recipients, very little of the
money gets down the people. Those one-offs will get temporary hurrahs
from households everywhere for Obama, but that money will soon be
spent and be gone, the final crumbs to be offered from the banker's
grasping hand.
We're to have lots of funding for medical research, enriching
pharmaceutical companies and providing investment opportunities in
expensive new medical systems. This in a nation that already has the
most modern medical facilities, and where the real need is for
affordable access and preventive services, not more research. We're to
have infrastructure projects, with an emphasis on the private sector,
which amounts to the standard formula of profit through privatization.
We're to get school modernization, providing more investment
opportunities and most likely privatization of education, while the
real problems in our schools come from large class sizes,
inappropriate teacher training, and the lack of jobs after graduation,
not from a lack of the latest computers, expensive laboratories, and
high-speed Internet access.
The flagship of the stimulus package is of course the pursuit of
alternative energy sources and energy independence. This appeals
strongly to environmental sentiment, and it seems superficially like
it could reduce our trade deficit, by reducing energy imports. What
this agenda does for sure is open up all kinds of investment
opportunities, producing and selling biofuels, wind farms, solar
cells, high-capacity batteries, hydrogen engines, or whatever, to
fulfill government-mandated requirements, such as a 20% biofuel
content in all auto fuel. By merely mandating such a requirement, the
government creates billions in profits for private investors. But are
these program really going to solve any of the problems they are
supposed to solve?
Consider biofuels. There are some ways of producing biofuels, such as
from garbage and other waste products, that do make sense. But when it
comes to mass production, to satisfy an existing mandated biofuel
market, we must turn to the mass growing of crops, like corn or sugar
cane, that can be converted into fuel. This requires fuel for the
tractors and petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers. By the time
the crops are harvested, converted to useable fuel, and delivered to
market, more energy resources have been used than the fuel itself
provides in the tank.
For the same reasons, the total carbon footprint is greater with
biofuels than from using gasoline directly, and the price is higher
because the production costs are greater. Not only that, but biofuels
take land out of food production, greatly increasing food prices and
global starvation. In addition, importing biofuels from Brazil is not
energy independence. Net value of biofuels: all negative by every
measure, apart from investment profits generated.
Other alternatives, such as wind farms, nuclear, and solar cells, even
with massive investments, can contribute only marginally to our total
energy usage. Unless we dramatically reduce our energy consumption, by
something closer to 80% than 20%, we will still be using lots of
petroleum. Perhaps there are enough reserves in North America to keep
us going for a while, but how does it help our independence to use up
our own supply? Don't we get more independence by buying cheap foreign
oil now, and saving our reserves for when peak oil really kicks in? In
the absence of a plan to massively reduce our consumption, the pursuit
of energy independence is both futile and economically counter-
productive. But lots of profits can be made in the process of trying.
That brings us to Obama's plans for energy savings, and the promotion
of energy-efficient cars. By mandating insulation standards for
buildings, and mileage standards for cars, we get some marginal energy
savings and we get lots more investment opportunities. But in terms of
long-term energy usage, or energy independence, an emphasis on energy-
efficient cars represents a very misguided choice of priorities.
With peak oil looming on the horizon, any rational energy agenda,
particularly if it is willing to consider change and hard choices,
needs to be aimed toward achieving sustainability. Marginally reducing
our energy consumption, while continuing to depend on highways and jet
planes for most of our transport, and petroleum-intensive agriculture
for our food, will never make us sustainable. Just as money has fiscal
accountability, so does energy. As regards the need for
sustainability, let me borrow from Brian Cowan's phrase, "We have no
choice, the energy simply isn't there."
We've been riding on an energy bubble for the past century, based on
plentiful and cheap oil, and that bubble must burst, just as our
economic bubble has burst. If we aren't prepared, we'll experience an
even bigger collapse than we are experiencing at this time. And it
will be a collapse that the financial wizards can't do anything about.
We may be able to print money, but we can't print energy. If the
trucks don't roll, the cities starve. Obama's energy strategy, and his
emphasis on 'building for future growth', are attempts to keep the
energy bubble going by means other than oil. It can't be done. The oil-
bonanza is a one-off. There's no comparable substitute, nothing even
close.
Because of cheap oil, suburbs have developed, long daily commutes have
become standard, cars have become mandatory for all, and our rail
systems have atrophied. Because of cheap oil, energy-intensive
agriculture has been very profitable, and has therefore come to
dominate global food production. Because of cheap oil, people have
become accustomed to flying around the world in massive numbers every
day, for either business or pleasure. Because of cheap oil, most of
the things we buy come from far distant shores. Our basic
infrastructures and trade patterns have all been radically distorted
over the past century due to the availability of cheap oil.
We cannot move toward sustainability by seeking other ways to maintain
these oil-enabled infrastructures and trade patterns. It is not more
efficient cars that we need, but rather a more efficient way of
getting around, and a reduction in our need to get around. And
personal transport is far too narrow a focus. Equally important is how
our goods move around, and how far they travel from producer to
consumer.
Perhaps most important is how our food is produced. Here we are
dealing not only with energy sustainability, but with the
sustainability of our soils and water supplies. Modern industrial-
scale agriculture is profitable, due to cheap oil, but it ruins the
soil and it wastes massive quantities of water. Small-scale organic
agriculture uses less water and energy, restores the soil, increases
employment, and produces healthier, pesticide-free food. Cuba was
forced, by economic circumstances, to convert from modern methods to
organic farming, and that turned out to be beneficial in all these
ways and others:
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VHt5QchfdQ
http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php
Obama has described his stimulus package as a "jump start", aimed at
"getting growth going again". And it is notable that he calls it a
stimulus plan rather than a recovery plan. The emphasis is on
stimulating growth, rather than on helping the economy recover.
We will get growth, if you measure that by all the investor profits
that will be made pursuing Obama's menu of counter-productive projects
and government mandates. But this is not the kind of growth that
revives an economy, rather it is the kind of growth that investors
squeeze out of an economy. This is the same kind of investment growth
that has been going on in the third world even as the people starve in
refugee camps. This is growth according to banker's logic, and it
reflects the relegation of American society to third-world status,
along with the rest of the West.
Global depression and the IMF "solution"
While the bankers are being treated to a jump-start in their post-
bailout investments, the global recession is deepening into a dismal
global depression, likely to be accompanied by hyper-inflation. This
seems to be happening most rapidly in Eastern Europe, and in response
the IMF, like the Fed, is prepared to print money with no backing, as
we learn in the UK Telegraph of 15 February:
"The sums needed are beyond the limits of the IMF, which has already
bailed out Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Iceland, and Pakistan
and Turkey next and is fast exhausting its own $200bn (155bn)
reserve. We are nearing the point where the IMF may have to print
money for the world, using arcane powers to issue Special Drawing
Rights."
Failure to save East Europe will lead to worldwide meltdown
http://tinyurl.com/aavxj6
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newslog/message/1607
The coming depression was made inevitable by the bailouts, which
transferred all the wealth to the bankers that should have been used
instead to revive economic activity on main street. As they watch the
depression set in, the financial elite are using the bailout money to
consolidate their ownership of the banking sector, while they wait for
the right time to announce their "solution" to the orchestrated
depression.
The Telegraph tells us that "the IMF may have to print money for the
world", as if such an action would only be undertaken reluctantly by
the IMF. In fact it has been a dream and a goal of financial elites
for a very long time to establish a global Central Bank, with the
power to directly control the world's credit and money supply. The IMF
has exercised that power on a de facto basis in the third world for
some time, on behalf of these elites, and they would like nothing
better than to institutionalize the IMF's central-banking role on a
global basis.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as reported in BBC News of 1 February,
seems to be leading the way in introducing the idea of a stronger IMF
into public discussion, as he spoke at the recent World Economic Forum
in Davos:
"Gordon Brown says there is no precedent for the 'first financial
crisis of the global age'. ...He called for co-operation and the
rebuilding of 'out-of-date' institutions such as the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank. ...He said the solution did not lie
in just nationalising banks and there was a need for a 'global
regulatory system' to ensure that such a crisis could be prevented in
the future."
PM says 'no clear map' for crisis
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/davos/7862203.stm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newslog/message/1522
Here we see history repeating itself. In 1913 a financial crisis was
orchestrated in America, under the guidance of JP Morgan, and that
crisis enabled the Federal Reserve to be established, accompanied by
sombre assurances that future crises would be prevented. The
assurances were worthless and the new Fed proceeded to use its central
bank powers to pursue the interests of its elite owners. Far from
being avoided, bubbles and collapses have been a regular feature of
the Federal Reserve era, generating wealth for insider elites on both
the upturns and the downturns.
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the
issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by
deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them
will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children
will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Thomas Jefferson
Gordon Brown has broached the subject, but the crisis will need to get
worse before the governments of the world, at least of the West, will
be prepared to hand over their financial sovereignty to the IMF. And
of course the crisis will get worse; that has been guaranteed by the
bailout programs, which left governments paralyzed by the depletion of
their treasuries and by their indebtedness.
Already we've seen anti-government riots in Iceland, a scattering of
food riots around the world, and increasing anger by labor groups as
plants are closed and workers are put out on the streets, their
pension funds having vanished in the collapse. As the ranks of the
unemployed and the homeless swell by the millions, and the wheels of
the economy grind to a halt, civil unrest and discontent will begin to
dominate the headlines. Desperate people everywhere will be screaming
for something to be done. The stage will be set for the long-prepared
"solution" to be implemented.
We will be told that nations aren't capable anymore of dealing with
these unprecedented global problems. 'Economic nationalism' will be
cited as one cause of the problems, and presumably protectionist
measures will have emerged by then, providing 'evidence' for the
claim. Distinguished pundits will explain on TV that global problems
can only be dealt with by global institutions, and that they must have
the "teeth" to cut through red tape and narrow-minded national politics.
Earnest economists will pop up on panel shows to give us the candid
inside story of why an IMF central bank is the only way to re-invent
the monetary system, provide stability, and enable recovery. As
governments then concede their financial sovereignty, they will be
'responding' to pubic sentiment. Obama will congratulate us for
"joining with him" in making this "hard choice".
Let me issue and control a nations money and I care not who writes
the laws.
Amshall Rothschild
The fact is that financial control trumps political control. Financial
control can come in the form of debt, as in the third world, or more
directly in the form of a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve.
In either case, the power of governments to pursue agendas depends on
their ability to finance them, and the purse strings of their
treasuries lay in the hands of private bankers.
With the power this gives the bankers over national affairs, it
becomes very easy for them to exert more direct political influence as
well, whether it be by financing a coup in the third world, or by
promoting a politician to the Presidency. Not only is the promoted
leader obliged to his backers, but his ability to get anything done
while in power depends on their ongoing cooperation.
Thus did all the Western governments line up and respond in the same
way to the banking collapse, never considering alternatives to the
bank-proposed bailouts. Rarely have the strings of power been so
nakedly apparent, as the puppets all danced to the same tune and sang
the same senseless song, while studiously ignoring the elephant in the
room.
When the IMF central bank gets established, not too long from now, we
will then see a replay of the EU scenario, where what began as an
economic cooperation zone incrementally morphed into a proto-state
with power centralized in Brussels. The earlier arguments about global
problems needing global solutions will come to the fore again, with
respect to the problems of development, poverty, war and peace,
nuclear proliferation, terrorism, climate change, the drug trade,
human trafficking, immigration, piracy, whaling, etc. In the media
harp, there is a string for every ear. Political sovereignty, like
economic sovereignty before it, will be yielded by governments due to
popular demand. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Western leaders have already been calling for a stronger, 'reformed'
UN, and clearly the UN will provide the framework for a one-world
government, just as the IMF & World Bank will provide the framework
for a global central bank. The UN 'peacekeeping force', which is
increasingly taking on active combat missions already, will provide
the framework for a well-equipped, modern, global policing force, the
enforcer in the bank-run imperialist system. There will be a rapid-
strike force designed to deal with rebellious nations, and another to
deal with popular uprisings, most likely privatized out to Blackwater-
style mercenaries. These are not crystal-ball guesses, but rather
straightforward extrapolations from the long-employed modus operandi
of long-observed perps.
What we are left with is a global system administered by a government-
without-a-country-or-culture, under the firm control of a globe-
hopping elite financial clique, with nations reduced to province
status, budgets determined by banker's logic, and growth measured by
investor returns. How that hodgepodge system will evolve is hard to
say, but some kind of neo-aristocratic-feudalism seems likely. In any
case, it will be a much different order of things than we're used to,
and that's why they call it the new world order.
As we stand on the threshold of historic change, there is only one
person on the world stage that is recognized as being a real leader,
someone with genuine vision, along with trusted integrity. The Gordon
Browns and Angela Merkels of the world pale in comparison. His words
and image are featured in the daily global media, and his inauguration
was watched and celebrated around the world. Commentators told us
that he was more than just America's new leader, but the leader the
world needs, in these dire times.
Subsequently, Obama sold out his country's future and launched a
counter-productive stimulus package, yet he's still smiling, and his
fans love him more than ever. The man has real talent, aided of course
by the fawning global media. He is the ideal candidate to project a
positive spin, a vision of hope, as each of the hard choices are made
along the garden path of good intentions. In reviewing Obama's
performance so far, particularly his economic agenda, and his
continuing popularity, I would have no choice, by banker's logic, but
to give him an A+. There seems little doubt that Obama has been
designated as Pied Piper, tasked with leading the world willingly into
the abyss.
For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the
political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to
attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim
we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even
believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best
interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as
'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to
build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one
world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am
proud of it.
David Rockefeller, Memoirs, 6-11-6
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