Last fall, I argued that the violent reaction to Occupy and other protests around the world had to do with the 1%ers' fear of the rank and file exposing massive fraud if they ever managed get their hands on the books. At that time, I had no evidence of this motivation beyond the fact that financial system reform and increased transparency were at the top of many protesters' list of demands.
But this week presents a sick-making trove of new data that abundantly fills in this hypothesis and confirms this picture. The notion that the entire global financial system is riddled with systemic fraud – and that key players in the gatekeeper roles, both in finance and in government, including regulatory bodies, know it and choose to quietly sustain this reality – is one that would have only recently seemed like the frenzied hypothesis of tinhat-wearers, but this week's headlines make such a conclusion, sadly, inevitable.
Indeed - the fixing of LIBOR and the fact that regulators including the current Secretary of the Treasury and then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York did nothing serious to stop it and never exposed it to the public is the biggest example of a system that is rigged beyond measure.
If they fixed LIBOR and the regulators knew it and did little to nothing to stop it, then frankly nothing in the financial system can be trusted, no one in the financial world can be trusted, no one in regulation or government can be trusted to put things right.
The system is rigged and rotten to the core.
Naomi Wolf is quite right when she says no wonders the criminals in power reacted so violently to the Occupy protests.
They know they're standing on dominoes that are tottering.
The crookedness and criminality are so widespread that they are too difficult to hide anymore.
And so the oligarchs respond with violence and repression and control.
Expect to see much more of this from the elite and their security apparatus as the rot at the core of the system continues to become apparent:
Hundreds of Los Angeles police in riot gear, shooting rubber bullets, clashed with Occupy L.A. protesters and street artists attending a sidewalk chalk-drawing event dubbed "Free Chalk for Free Speech" as part of the monthly L.A. ArtWalk. Several injuries and 19 arrests, mostly for "vandalism." For drawing in chalk, in the rain? Overreact much?
Ah yes - using rubber bullets on protesters armed with chalk.
That's where we're at today.
And soon, the drones.
I am still upset over what happened last fall when the NYPD broke up the Occupy camp at Zuccotti Park in the dead of night, including banning and even arresting legal observers and reporters. One of the most troubling aspects of this was the reaction of the general public. Letters to newspapers editors and TV man-on-the-street interviews seemed to indicate that a lot of people were more concerned with matters of hygiene and noise levels than they were with civil liberties and societal inequality. It is disturbing that ordinary people were applauding Bloomberg/Kelly for their actions, instead of realizing what really was at stake.
ReplyDeleteI agree - I had people who expressed this to me, pretty much verbatim from the jive they heard on FOX 5 or CBS 2 or the DN or Post. Disturbing. But that's how the rotten system perpetuates itself - by distracting people from the core problems with ancillary jive and b.s.
ReplyDeleteOne seemingly unique aspect of the reaction to the LIBOR deal is the seamless shift from the pre-LIBOR "There is no conspiracy of bankers in the real world, you're so naive to think so, that tin-foil hat looks great on you", to the post-LIBOR, actual justification that I've actually heard from pundits, insiders and friends, that "The rigging was a victimless crime, that was at worst neutral in its effects since as many benefit from a lower as a higher rate, and probably spurred the recovery since the overall effect seems to have been a stimulative lower interest rate. You should be grateful."
ReplyDeleteI swear to God that's what people are actually saying now, the easy pivot from people who think there's a banking-regulatory conspiracy are naive idiots, to, you don't even understand that this benefited you, dummy!
Our nation is being ruined by the financialization of the economy and its dominance by parasites and predators, the takeover of the schools and other public goods, the breaking of the unions, hyper gentrification and dispossession of the poor and working class in some places coinciding with abandonment and blight in others.
ReplyDeleteAnd behind it all are people with guns, licensed by the sociopaths who've taken over the State to use violence at the slightest peep of opposition. It's no wonder that under the neoliberal regime of the past thirty years, the US has become a carceral society, with the world's largest prison population, one increasingly managed by private, for-profit corporations.
Yes, it's no wonder OWS was so frightening to the Overclass: since their worldview and habits of mind are based on Greed and Fear, they had to employ the latter to protect the former.
Fire Fighters For Truth...
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