Bailing Out Wall Street: The Ease Of The Disease Is More Seductive Than The Cure

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Bailing Out Wall Street:
The Ease Of The Disease Is
More Seductive Than The Cure

By Reverend Eric Ivler Rubin

29 September, 2008
Countercurrents.org

"The things that used to matter don't mean much any more -When the ease of the disease is more seductive than the cure." --Paul Geremia Gamblin' Woman Blues1

According to economists and politicians in Washington DC, many of whom all responsible for the current collapse of the US economy, there is a unified mantra: “Bail out the financial institutions, or America as we know it is doomed.”

But maybe America “as we know it” is not something the American people may want to keep!

For the hundreds of thousands of workers who have lost jobs over the last ten years, and the just as many retirees who were robbed of their pensions by transnational financial institutions, or for those on social security or Medicaid who struggle with the decision of whether to half-dose their medication so they have money to eat, while wondering why CEO’s of failed financial institutions are set to receive millions of dollars in rewards for bankrupting America, maybe America as we know it has already failed.

These are the people that are most affected by this crisis, but who don’t have high paid lobbyist to “sell” their case to the media and politicians. Their only hopes they have to be heard are by those they have elected to serve them . It is sad to say that they have been forgotten except in sound bites of political advertisements about “main street.” For them, maybe America "as we know it" is already a lifeless corpse.

So what is the so-called solution? Spend more taxpayers' money to bail out speculative institutions that have failed because of the finite reality that “money is not productive”? The question of who controls the reigns of these institutions is irrelevant. Whether the US government or private business control the bailout, the bailout itself does nothing to eliminate the base problem of corporate capitalism-expand or die.

This is not about greed, but about a system that is forces corporations to expand its market and increase profits by reducing costs, or risk being consumed by another that will. This form of global cannibalism, or as others call it global capitalism, has forced those companies that do in fact produce products to move from country to country looking for the cheapest labor and the most lax government control. Speculative capital, which is often described as investment capital, has become the main source of wealth for those seeking to make money from money.

As David Korten, a well respected economist says, “Each day half a million to a million people--primarily Western Europeans, North Americans, and Japanese--arise as dawn reaches their part of the world, turn on their computers, and leave the real world of people, things, and nature to immerse themselves in playing the world's most lucrative computer game: the money game. As their computers come on line, they enter a world of cyberspace constructed of numbers that represent money and complex rules by which those numbers can be converted into a seemingly infinite variety of financial instruments, each with its own distinctive risks and reproductive qualities. Through their interactions, the players engage in competitive transactions aimed at acquiring for their own accounts the money that other players hold.

Players can also pyramid the amount of money in play by borrowing from one another and bidding up prices. Indeed, the money game players have been so successful in creating play money that for every $1 now circulating in the productive world economy of real goods and services, it is estimated that there is $20 to $50 circulating in the world of pure finance--"investment" funds completely delinked from the creation of real value. In the international currency markets alone, some $800 billion to $1 trillion changes hands each day--unrelated to productive investment or trade in actual goods and services…. the play money it generates can be exchanged for real money to buy things from people who work in the real world. Unfortunately for the rest of us, though it is played like a game and the transactions involve nothing more than moving numbers from one electronic account to another through a global web of computers, the money game has enormous real consequences.”2 Take this recent U.S. economic crisis as an example.

For productive capitalism in the US we can see the results. Those who have produced are unemployed. Even the weapons and armament for U.S troops is outsourced to other countries. We see the growing number of unemployed who had previously worked, and the growing level of poverty amongst the elderly and retired. America’s productive economic base is disappearing and with its disappearance is the demise of the “American Dream”, the belief that if you are honest, work hard, and persevere, you one day can have a better life for your family than you had . This belief, in providing something better for the next generation, has been the driving force not only of the economic development of the U.S, but more importantly the moral development of the American people.

But don’t worry we are told, productive work is for the poor of other counties, as Americans we can make our money off money. Investments, pension plans, IRA’s etc. However the money that was actually earned BY productive labor and invested in this get rich quick scheme.. well.. just read the papers.. it is getting worse.. our earnings that we made in productive and honest labor is disappearing within smoke and mirrors. As unemployment grows, and the opportunity for even minimum wage jobs disappear, the millions who never made enough for pension plans and stock options, and who over the years never benefited from the corporate tax breaks find themselves asking, “ When we asked for a bailout when our jobs took flight oversees, did the government bail us out? No! When our children were sick and we had no jobs and couldn’t afford health care for our kids, did the government bail us out? NO. When catastrophic illness of a of loved one forced us to make a decision- what little we owned or their life, and we asked the government to help us, did they stay up into the early hours of the morning negotiating in our interest to bail us out..No!

So what is the alternative? Three simple letters W-P-A!

Suppose we didn’t bail out the banks and financial institutions? What is the worst that would happen?

According to the pundits of the bailout the economy will fail. For many if not most of America the economy has failed already. We don’t have jobs, or we have TWO jobs we take in order to get insurance for our families, even if they pay nothing) and then second jobs in order to pay our bills (these are the fortunate ones, sad to say)

“In his Annual Message to Congress on January 4 of that year, Roosevelt spoke critically of the failure of his administration's first-term efforts:

‘We find our population suffering from the old inequalities, little changed by our past sporadic remedies. In spite of our effort and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the overprivileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged....We have...a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear the conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well. In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power. {2} 3

In a speech in 1939, Florence Kerr, Assistant Administrator of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), said the following: ‘And there are more people who have heard so much bitter criticism of the WPA that they think maybe the critics are right. They wonder if maybe this "work relief business" is all a mistake.

It costs a lot of money. And it never seems to come to an end. It is true that we get a great deal for the money we spend on work relief. It is true that we get hundreds of thousands of miles of new and improved roads--thousands of schools, hospitals and other public buildings built or repaired--thousands of bridges--hundreds of new airports--thousands of parks, athletic fields, gymnasiums, swimming pools--thousands of miles of new water mains and sewers hundreds of miles of levees--thousands of dams--millions of new trees planted in our state and national forests. But maybe it is all wrong--maybe we should get along without those roads and schools and hospitals and sewers and parks.

Our communities seems to approve of the work program--they ask for more and more WPA projects all the time and put up their own money to help pay for them. In the last three years our American communities have contributed over a billion dollars of their own to WPA projects for civic improvement. And the recent United States Community Appraisals, undertaken by the American Engineering Council and nine other independent national organizations, which report the views of nearly eight thousand county and town officials in communities large and small all over the United States, chows them overwhelming and almost unanimously in favor of the continuance of work relief. But maybe they don't know what they are talking about. Maybe the critics of the work program know better. Maybe it is a mistake to put our unemployed to work for the benefit of the communities in which they live. Maybe they should be maintained in enforced idleness on a starvation dole, losing their skills, losing their morale, losing all hope for themselves and all faith in American democracy. “4

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It can also be said that those who learn from history can change the future. Maybe it is time to listen to Ms. Kerr as there was a program in our history that worked and served the people. We are at a crossroads: do we serve the rich and powerful, and support a failed system, or do we have the courage to be true to our desires, hopes and dreams? As Ms. Kerr said “The plain truth is that the United States, for all its riches, has been sadly backward in protecting the health of its population, and it has in many parts of the country been unable to provide adequate education. As for the public provision of recreation, we have only just waked up to the need for it. In all these fields, the WPA is helping our communities to do what has long needed to be done. It is helping to do what must be done if we are to boast of being a civilized country. And no person who has truly at heart the interests of American civilization can wish undone what the WPA is doing. “5

Perhaps we, the American public, should take the $700 billion earmarked for those who have caused this crisis and to quote Nancy Reagan, “Just say No!” $700 billion would go a long way to start a NEW WPA which would provide jobs and money to the American people and at the same time rebuilds both the country’s economy and infrastructure that has been decimated by those who now are asking for this bailout.

Yes the American people want change, and they do want bread…and roses! If those in power refuse to address our realities, we will have no choice but to deliver these realities to the power brokers and politicians in a mass, non-violent way.

Reverend Eric Ivler Rubin is the ex Director of the Florida Fair Trade Coalition, and currently is the Minister at the Serve the People House of Worship in St. Petersburg, Fl. Email: [email protected]

1 Paul Geremia Gamblin' Woman Blues, released by Red House Records in 1993, in "The Things That Used to Matter

2 David Korten http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/failure.htm

4 http://newdeal.feri.org/search_details.cfm?
link=http://newdeal.feri.org/works/wpa04.htm

5 http://newdeal.feri.org/search_details.cfm?
link=http://newdeal.feri.org/works/wpa04.htm