Quoting from Robert Sheer’s “Libor Interest Rate Scandal: Crime of the Century” from TruthDig.com, via Common Dreams:
<http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/06-3>
“The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financiers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cess-pool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.” . . . . . . . . [He concludes] “The sad reality is that they will probably get away with it. The world of high finance is by design as obscure and opaque as the bankers and their political surrogates can make it, and even this most recent crack in their defense of deception will soon be made to go away.”
The world banking “bidnis” (industry is too nice a word) has bled us down to where this very set of people and their investor allies are they who insist that nations must submit to austerity measures that further bleed the populace to make up for the financial blood lost to their vampire-like behavior. In the U. S., these banksters are certain to support the Republican Party as most likely to help them get away with the loot. They are the reason for the Federal Reserve’s vast explosion of fiat money into both the world and national economies. Everyone will have to suffer the resulting loss of monetary value through inflation which lessens the buying power of an already shrunken dollar. Prices of food and much else will rise everywhere relative to incomes and available funds.
One must conclude that there has come to be an unprecedented degree of corruption affecting our economy, compared to which the savings & loan and Enron scandals were child’s play. It is not clear whether or not our country and the world can be cured and put back on sound footing. It will require massive willpower from the entire populace of civilization.
Sad to say, here at home, we see in our politics a virtually complete loss of shame on the part of the wealthy and corporate classes represented by the Republican Party. These elite groups, especially the more misbehaving members of the super-rich, evidently suffer a heavy burden of unacknowledged guilt for their destructive impact on the middle and working classes, and for the deterioration of society’s most vital institutions together with public values vis-a-vis private interests. Covert guilt is the key.
So many nicely dressed, seemingly educated people are complicit in the immense boondoggles of defense spending and improper intelligence gathering that there may be no way to turn the tide and put things level. Vast numbers of otherwise good folks have become part of the problem through insidious drift into relatively blind participation based on narrow self-interest and/or imagined goodness of service to nation and world. People tend to compartmentalize and rationalize, fabricating ideal images of themselves and what they are about.
How can any sensible nation of human beings become so fearful of differences in the world, and of retaliation for its citizen’s or corporation’s profit-driven mischief and military violence abroad and police threat at home against its own least-powerful people? The answer is that some in positions of power lack real accountabilty beyond a narrow range of requirements. They forget humanity and simply lose it. Humane behavior is not required of them beyond face-to-face associations. They help the world become a scary and dismal place for ordinary people everywhere.
Ubiquitous habits of comparison give rise to feelings of insecurity on the part of anyone who is somehow different from many others around. Great wealth is one of those differences. Wealth is not measured in absolute figures but in relative amounts on a scale from top to bottom of financial power. The greater the distance from top to bottom, the more precarious is the sense of height. Hence, the bodyguards, fenced estates and gated communities, the security manned high-rises with penthouses; the firearms in closets, doors and dash-boards. The fear, translated down even to small farmers and backwoods householders about legislation that could take away their precious guns.
So then, from guilt and distance come fear and defensiveness. Thus rises the Imperial Military and Security State with its inbuilt urge and power to dominate or expropriate. Uncontrolled corporate behavior has raised antipathy to us in many places which, in turn, seems to threaten certain power elités who call for military strikes against the aggrieved. Agencies and think-tanks rationalize the need for “defensive” aggression.. Defense of what? The American People? No. Defense of elité wealth and property. But, we’re always the good guys. Right?
Right here in Benicia, we have a few upright-seeming folks who feel deeply insulted and aggrieved if you name them as the fascists they are. They feel free to cry “socialist” at anyone not in their circle. Just never name them in return, they lack the ability to sense the aptness of terms truly describing them. Their fear meter hits the top of the dial, forcing them to vent groundless nonsense in return, with simulated umbrage. You know it can’t be genuine anger because they are phonies gripped by false consciousness of self, situation, values and nation. Their ideas are set as in concrete. It is futile to try to disconvince those who imagine themselves right about everything. They can only be whipped at the polls and driven back into privacy, simmering up machinations against any thought, value or hope but their own invalidly utopian dream.
It’s no use to seek mutual understanding and solidarity with them. They know everything worthwhile already and they know we are not worthwhile. They will insist they aren’t fascists, claiming it because they wear no armbands or jackboots and would never dream of clapping us into concentration camps or mass graves. My feeling is, give them absolute power and they will do absolute evil. Being over “on the right” makes them totally self-righteous and unwilling to debate openly and honestly. The guilt they would then accumulate by eclipsing left and center would perhaps stay submerged to the end of the world.
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