Seven Days That Shook The World

Much has happened in the last week. In seven days I’ve seen the beginning of the end, the mother of all deflationary spirals and the shape of things to come. On Monday, the US Congress at first rejected a 700 billion dollar bailout for Wall Street only to pass that very same bill (with an additional 100 billion in pork to sooth the nerves of some rebellious Republicans representatives) four days later. Then on Thursday there was the surreal debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. Surreal as only a debate between two politicians can be, when both are pledging their support for the working class (the hockey moms and the six-pack Joes) while their respective bosses, John McCain and Barack Obama, are doing everything they can to get the bailout (a bill which gives everything to the mega rich and nothing to the common man) passed.

US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's new hairdo after the Wall Street bailout

Over the weekend the “Sub-prime” tsunami picked up steam and in Europe leaders of the major economies were meeting to see if they couldn’t forestall the inevitable with a coordinated bailout of some of the continents major financial players. Sarkozy, Brown, Berlusconi and Merkel met in Paris and essentially agreed in a quintessentially European way not to agree on anything. It’s every man for himself in the crash of 2008 and bank nationalizations (the Fortis Bank in the Netherlands) and failures (the colossal Hypo Real Estate company of Germany) are the order of the day. Iceland is on the brink of bankruptcy and has seen its once strong currency plummet against the dollar and the Euro. In Ireland rumors of a run on the nation’s banking system forced the government to declare that it would cover all personal deposits, which it probably wouldn’t have the money to do if everyone did try to get their money out, but something had to be said.

Finally, in an effort to calm the markets before they re-open on Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced with her finance minister that the government would, like Ireland, cover all personal accounts in German banks. In doing this she pledged to insure about 500 billion euros, more or less the amount that the US Congress had refused to hand over to Wall Street on Monday. With Merkel having to make that kind of guarantee it’s no wonder that the objective of the Paris meeting (a coordinated, pan-European bailout plan) came to nothing. The Germans know that the worst is yet to come and have decided to first take care of their own. If the banks in Greece, or Italy, or Spain start to fall, it will be up to their governments to save them if they can.

I could be wrong but I can’t help thinking that the world is about to enter a period of prolonged economic depression. The Banksters have bitten off a bit more than they can chew this time. The high priests of “turbo capitalism” have led us all, willingly or not, to the edge of the cliff and over the precipice. And as any truthful economist will tell you, once all the bubbles have been burst there’s really nothing you can do to stop a system from de-leveraging. No bailout will ever hold and the house of cards built with deceit and the purest strains of capitalist greed must fall.

The world as we know it is about to change and whether we are all eventually governed by corporate dictatorships or finally decide to throw off our chains and live as free men has yet to be seen. The choice is ours.

President Palin

Recent polls say that Obama and McCain are neck and neck and that who will win in November is anyone’s guess. Still I find it hard to believe that any intelligent American, after eight years of the Bush administration’s “slash and burn” approach to politics, could find it in themselves to vote for another four with John McCain.

Fundamentally there isn’t that much difference between the two. Both support the War on Terror (Obama even praises Bush’s surge in Iraq, saying that it "has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams"). Both are beholden to the major corporations and banks that brought on the current economic crisis in the States. Neither is in favor of a “single-payer” national health insurance plan, similar to the Canadian and European models. Of course, being successful politicians, they long ago learned that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and that means the Health Management Organizations and all the defense contractors who will continue to rack in their obscene profits no matter who ends up in the White House.

The real difference lies in their choice of vice-presidential running mates. Obama picked Joe Biden, who is about as “insider” as you can get in Washington. He is also connected by the umbilical to the country’s largest credit card companies. He spearheaded S-256, the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005”. It is a law which essentially strips people of the kind of protection they used to have, leaving at the mercy of their creditors, almost always the credit card companies. He is a man who has been bought and paid for by these corporations and America being America there is nothing exceptional in this. It’s just the way things are done.

McCain’s choice, however, is a reminder, should anyone need one, of how nasty the elite of America can be when the chips are down. When the Democrats finished their convention in Denver with Obama’s nomination in a stadium filled with 80,000 spectators from all over the country and the world, the Republicans were in trouble. Their candidate was trailing in some polls by almost ten percentage points and all you had to do was look at Obama’s bombastic speaking style and compare it to the mousy McCain whenever he spoke and know that the jig was up. McCain was old (and full of cancer) while Obama was young and in his prime. The choice was clear, but that’s when McCain decided to throw the Democrats a screwball and he unveiled Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska.

Govenor Sarah Palin

Palin is a Jacobin. A radical fundamentalist Christian who believes that the US invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq is “God’s war” and who thinks that all young Americans should be over there fighting Islam, just as one of her sons is. She also thinks that homosexuals should be jailed (and perhaps even burned at the stake) and that “creationism” (a pseudo-science that preaches the world was created in just seven days) should be taught in all public schools. So convinced is she of the satanic properties of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” that she tried to have the book banned from the library of the small town where she was mayor, and when that didn’t work she tried to fire the librarian.

She is, as everyone knows, against abortion and proudly announced before the republican convention began that her pregnant seventeen year old daughter was going to keep her baby and that the “father” had been convinced to marry his girlfriend, even though he was quoted in one interview as saying that he didn’t “want to have anything to do with children”.

Palin is in favor of unlimited oil drilling in her state (even in nature preserves) and says that she is an avid hunter and eater of moose meat. What many people don’t know is that she is also in favor of aerial hunting of apex predators such as bears and wolves and has signed laws in Alaska making this unsportsmanlike and cowardly killing easier.

So why would McCain choose such an anti-environment, gay-bashing imperialist like Palin when over 70% of Americans are against the war in Iraq and are worried about the effects of global warming? Simple, because the Republican Party is not longer a democratic organization but a theocracy whose members for the most part believe, as the Bible teaches, in the Second Coming, the reign of the Beast and the number 666. They are Dominionists one and all and are preparing the world for that day when Christianity will triumph over evil.

A hardcore Christian Fascist just a heartbeat away from the presidency. What a comforting thought.