AS ONE of that small band of
grumblers who has been saying for decades that the whole thing doesn’t add up –
either economically or environmentally – allow me my little rant now that, in
fact, it didn’t add up and that it all came crashing down.
In addition to the FBI being on a hunt for criminal wrongdoing
in the wreckage of Wall Street’s financial titans, raising the cheering
possibility that our friend Conrad Black will have some more company of his own
ilk in jail, we’re getting some big confessions that underline the enormity of
what has transpired.
The main one has been delivered by Alan Greenspan, former
maestro of the U.S. Federal Reserve, promoter of financial deregulation and
lower taxes for the rich, and disciple of greed-is-good diva Ayn Rand. In words
that will no doubt live on, he said last week: "I made a mistake in presuming
that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such
that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their
equity in the firms." Well, duh. Or as Aristotle said: "The avarice of mankind
is insatiable."
Not all have repented, mind you. President George W. Bush,
after he invaded Iraq, exhorted Americans to "keep spending, otherwise the
terrorists win." Now that pigging-out on credit has crashed the economy, how
long will we have to wait before he ’fesses up that, according to his
definition, the terrorists have won?
The peculiar notion that greed, uncompromising self-interest,
beggaring one’s neighbour, and letting the devil take the hindmost, not to
mention promoting rampant waste, is somehow a positive vision for society is
what has imploded (again). Or, as economist John Maynard Keynes, architect of
the post-Depression economic order, put it: "Capitalism is the extraordinary
belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work
for the benefit of us all."
It becomes even more strange when you consider that one of the
pillars of all this is the North American Christian fundamentalist movement,
which is the background of, among others, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and
President Bush. How greed, the fourth deadly sin in the Judeo-Christian order,
could be considered such a good thing by the Christian right is something else
I’m waiting to have explained.
And there’s a deeper dimension still. Keynes and his ideas of
government regulating financial institutions, more public spending to stimulate
the economy during times of recession or depression, and picking up the poor
with welfare state measures, were overturned some 30 years ago in the seats of
power by the hyper-free-enterprise theories of Milton Friedman of the University
of Chicago. It’s his prescriptions, and largely his disciples, that cut
regulations for financial institutions and taxes for the rich which have largely
precipitated the present crisis.
But beneath that still was a dimension that was actively
malevolent. In the book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
which made a splash earlier this year, author Naomi Klein outlines the way the
Chicago School operated, and explains the theory it spread: Take advantage of
disasters and crises – economic, social or natural – when people are confused
and hurting to strike and impose the new privatized order.
It was the script followed when 9-11 gave Bush the green light
to invade Iraq, a pre-planned action, and the "creative chaos" that followed the
invasion to the immense profit of military contractors. It was the script
followed throughout Latin America during the Reagan-Thatcher years, when
hyperinflation created by the debts of dictators led to crises in which newly
elected governments were destroyed by counter-coups, with the "Chicago boys"
directing policies of destroying public services, selling off government assets
to cronies, grinding the poor into the dirt; and for those who disagreed, there
was the torture chamber. This has been the dominant theory in most of the world,
applied by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, until the bubble
burst.
Now it’s in ruins. Ironically, we now have the biggest crisis
of all – thanks to the construct of this very theory collapsing, leaving the
uncertain question: What now? Meanwhile, at the University of Chicago, there was
a large public demonstration recently against naming a new building after
Friedman.
