Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row
‘Fall of the House of Capital?’
Published Oct 12, 2008 8:15 PM
Following is an edited version of an Oct. 1 audio column posted online
at www.prisonradio.org . Go to
www.millions4mumia.org to read
legal and political updates on his case.
By the time you read this, the $700-billion bailout will have been old news,
one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. But it will not heal that
which ails the nation as it trips and stumbles like a drunken sailor on shore
leave.
The reasons are simple.
For the problems are systemic, built into the rapacious nature of the machinery
humming all around us. This Rube Goldberg-like contraption of democratic forms
at the service of the financial services industry is a bottomless maw, a gaping
mouth that is never sated.
Why was there no alarm when millions of people lost their homes to foreclosures
made inevitable by variable mortgage rates? When millions lost manufacturing
jobs to low-paying service gigs? When living standards crumbled, and when
take-home pay fell to 1972 levels?
Where was the alarm?
There was no alarm for this—the blind market at work, the leveling way of
globalism, the new world order moving through, preparing the way for the
triumph of capitalism uber alles.
Few were the politicians who gave voice to this immense social suffering. Fewer
still used their power to try to assuage their pain, for they too were drunk on
the wine of globalism.
But when the ripples spread upwards, from the foreclosed homes to the
foreclosing banks and from the banks to investment houses, Congress steered
from their drunken stupor and rang alarm bells the loudest.
“It’s an economic 9/11!” some bellowed. “It’s a
financial tsunami!” said others.
When Americans were hoodwinked into subprime loans and millions were faced with
foreclosures, where was the alarm?
More importantly, where was the help for those who were endangered?
Nowhere—nowhere.
If they helped them, the present economic crisis would’ve been
mitigated.
Instead, we’re in a situation where a scam artist sets up shop on a
street corner, playing a fraudulent 3-card Monty hustle and along comes a cop.
The cop, instead of rousting the scam artist, goes into the pockets of every
passerby and delivers the stolen loot to the scammer.
The scam artist, of course, is the financial investment houses; the cop, of
course, is Congress—and you are the passersby, hustled and robbed by both
of them.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote, 160 years ago, that the State is but the
executive for the capitalist. After what we are all seeing, who can doubt
it?
The Empire is crumbling.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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