By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
United States President Barack Obama will probably go down in history simply as the African-American who rescued corporate capitalism.
It could – and should – have been much different.
The $25 trillion that the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve spent bailing out the banks, and the billionaires and mega-millionaires who control those banks, could have been used to benefit the masses – the poor, the working class and the middle class – instead.
The banks could – and should – have been allowed to fail and then nationalized and operated as state-owned entities. The only losers in such an equation would have been the billionaire and mega-millionaire banksters whose greed, incompetence, corruption and criminality caused the enitre global economic meltdown in the first place.
But Obama was so enthralled with the econocorporate socioeconomic elite that he couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
“This is America, after all,” the American president gushed. “We don’t begrudge people the fruits of their success.”
(Nor apparently was he willing to begrudge them enormous – largely untaxed – profits on their failures and criminality).
That $25 trillion that was frittered away, combined with massive cuts to U.S. defence spending and an end to the interminable tax holiday for corporations and the wealthy, could have transformed Amerikkka into a model for the entire world.
It could have turned rundown inner-city ghettoes across the country into stable low-income communities.
It could have provided free tuition at public universities for decades to come.
It could have launched a comprehensive, national, single-payer, universal health-care program.
It could have fixed all the public schools and roads and other crumbling urban infrastructure.
It could have created millions of good-paying jobs in the public sector providing all kinds of desperately needed social and recreational programs and services.
It could have greatly narrowed the gap between the rich and the rest.
And it could have wiped out all poverty in Amerikkka for the next 50 years.
But that was not part of the corporate capitalist agenda.
The corporate capitalist agenda – which is the only game in town in political Amerikkka – does not concern itself with the legitimate everyday needs of the masses – the poor, the working class and the middle class.
No, instead, the corporate capitalist agenda only concerns itself with continually enriching those who already have far more than their fair share and widening the awful gap between the rich and the rest.
The bailout of the banks was an amoral departure from basic social ethics and economic common sense.
The econocorporate socioeconomic elite has now been rescued from its own folly.
Not one of the thousands of financial and corporate malefactors has gone to prison or even been charged for the massive frauds they committed.
But it will be left to the struggling masses to pay for that wrongheaded bailout for decades to come.