Democracy and Now Capitalism Are Failing Ideologically; But What Comes Next?

/in , , /by

As I was prepping for my panel on Saturday, I was thinking a lot about PJ Crowley. Crowley is, as you’ll recall, the State Department spokesperson who was ousted after he called the treatment of Bradley Manning “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” In my panel, I quoted Crowley’s comments on American support for unrestricted media. And as I was reviewing all this, I was thinking about Crowley’s almost unremarked criticism last week of the Administration’s decision to move of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial to Gitmo.

The prosecution of #KhalidSheikhMohammed and others under untested military tribunals undercuts our global promotion of the rule of law.

For all my disagreements with Crowley about Manning’s incarceration (though note that Crowley is also one of the few in government who has criticized the embarrassing lack of security that made the alleged leak possible), I find his adherence to a now-outmoded approach to diplomacy charming. Almost quaint.

You see, Crowley still appears to believe that America’s claim to exceptionalism–the conceit that it serves as a model of democracy and rule of law and liberty to others around the world–not only still exists but still forms a part of our international policy. He believes that this country would choose to follow the law out of consideration that doing so will allow us to exercise power through persuasion rather than force.

Crowley’s ouster–the firing of a guy because he dared remind his bosses that American used to choose to do things the right way rather than the way of maximal power–seems symbolic that that approach is now dead.

Indeed, whether or not we’ve conceded it’s dead, others now recognize it, as Glenn Greenwald points out today. (h/t harpie)

Aside from what conduct like [his endorsement of Manning’s treatment and his persecution of whistleblowers] reveals about Obama, it also severely undermines the ability of the U.S. to exercise any shred of moral leadership in the world. Consider this series of events:

Washington Post, March 13, 2011:

Associated Press, April 4, 2011:

Reuters, yesterday:

The United States is beset by violence, racism and torture and has no authority to condemn other governments’ human rights problems, China said on Sunday, countering U.S. criticism of Beijing’s crackdown. . . . “The United States ignores its own severe human rights problems, ardently promoting its so-called ‘human rights diplomacy’, treating human rights as a political tool to vilify other countries and to advance its own strategic interests,” said a passage from the Chinese report.

China also “accused the U.S. . . . of pushing for Internet freedom around the world as a way to undermine other nations, while noting that Washington’s campaign against secret-spilling website WikiLeaks showed its own sensitivity to the free flow of information,” and further “lambasted the U.S. over issues ranging from homelessness and violent crime to the influence of money on politics and the negative effects of its foreign policy on civilians.” China’s human rights record is atrocious, but can anyone contest the validity of its objections to the U.S. and the Obama administration’s purporting to act as human rights arbiters for the world?

Now, all that simply shows that our ideological claim to serve as a model of law and liberty is dead.

But this–this is an ideological collapse America may have a much more difficult time dealing with, because it’s an ideological failure internally.

FAITH in the free market is at a low in the world’s biggest free-market economy. In 2010, 59% of Americans asked by GlobeScan, a polling firm, agreed “strongly” or “somewhat” that the free market was the best system for the world’s future. This has fallen sharply from 80% when the question was first asked in 2002. And among poorer Americans under $20,000, faith in capitalism fell from 76% to 44% in just one year. [my emphasis]

Now, granted, capitalism still commands majority support in this country; it’s just among the people paying the price of capitalism’s failure where support has really tanked. (Update: In this Gallup poll from a few weeks ago, 67% of those polled said corporations and banksters have too much power.)

But consider this: by a count of 67% to 59%, more people in China believe in the power of free markets right now than in the US. The communists like capitalism better than the capitalists themselves! (Maybe that’s because they’ve taken the jobs of the poorer Americans who lost theirs to globalization).

I wrote a fair bit about the collapse of capitalism as an ideology, internationally, back in January.

A corollary to the question, “after such a catastrophic failure in 2008, why aren’t we reining in capitalism and expanding the safety net?” is “why isn’t anyone declaring victory over capitalism in the same way capitalism once declared victory over communism?”

But who would declare victory? (Some humor: “Hu would declare victory.”)

[snip]

But I also think something else is going on with ideology as it existed during the Cold War. With the failure of both communism and (thus far, in more limited fashion) capitalism, it becomes increasingly clear that ideology doesn’t make for successful countries, governance does. Whether or not capitalism will experience a resurgence, our country has become corrupt and ineffective enough that it’s not clear we’d go with it. Moreover, the bogeyman that has replaced the Evil Empire–terrorism–is as much about an increasingly viable challenge to the nation-state, at a time when a rising number of failed states offer a geographic beachhead for such challenges. One of the most important ways to combat “terrorism” is to prevent militarization and climate issues to create more failed states. And that means there will be less emphasis on ideology as it worked in the Cold War and a greater premium on governance.

Which is important because failing capitalism is having real repercussions on things like food supply. Which, as we saw in Tunisia and may well see across the globe, cuts through any debate about ideology quickly. When it comes to the point where governments can’t feed their people, then they begin to fear the popular classes again, even if they’ve managed to insulate themselves from that for deacades.

Which brings us full circle, I think. DeBoer suggests we need greater ideological diversity in the blogosphere, and he’s right. But what we need just as badly is some way to articulate and mobilize the needs of the working class before our failure to govern (which the narrowness of our discourse fosters) ends up in food riots.

With the end of the Cold War, the US has had the luxury, for now, of completely ignoring the ideological left because the threats to the country–as the governing class sees them–have everything to do with the market and nothing to do with workers. But ultimately, the combination of failed governance and the market will lead right back to the workers.

But capitalism as an ideology internationally works differently than it does domestically. Internationally, it provides ideological cover for policies that concentrate wealth and create instability. As uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East show, ultimately reality will intrude and make such policies harder to sustain.

But free market ideology in the US has allowed far more than just anti-worker policies. In the same way our exploitation of democracy as an ideology internationally allowed us to rule through persuasion, working class belief in capitalism paved the way for corporations to take over our government without a fight.

That said, it’s unclear where this goes. Where ideology fails, force usually takes its place.

But it does seem like an opportunity. Now if only the left were prepared with a viable “something else” to offer.

Share this entry

The Charismatic Blonde Women and the Consent Decree

/in , /by

DDay reported on OCC’s attempt to preempt a foreclosure settlement on Monday. Today, Yves Smith has a long post giving the consent decrees the banks are trying to roll out in lieu of a real foreclosure settlement the disdain they deserve.

Wow, the Obama administration has openly negotiated against itself on behalf of the banks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so craven heretofore.

[snip]

The part I am puzzled by is who is behind this rearguard action. It clearly guts the Federal part of the settlement negotiations. If you pull out your supposed big gun (ex having done a real exam to find real problems, and it’s weaker than your negotiating demands, you’ve just demonstrated you have no threat. Now obviously, a much more aggressive cease and desist order could have been presented; it’s blindingly obvious that the only reason for putting this one forward was not to pressure the banks, as American Banker incorrectly argued, but to undermine the AGs and whatever banking/housing regulators stood with them (HUD and the DoJ were parties to the first face to face talks).

So the only part that I’d still love to know was who exactly is behind the C&D order? Is it just the OCC?

But what I’d like to know is why, coincident with the roll-out of this Potemkin resolution to the foreclosure problem, someone told Reuters that the Administration was considering Jennifer Granholm and/or Sarah Raskin to head the Consumer Finance Protection Board.

The White House is considering Federal Reserve Governor Sarah Raskin and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to head a new agency charged with protecting consumers of financial products, a source aware of the process said Tuesday.

You see, as Yves reminds us, one part of the whole AG settlement that this consent decree seems intended to replace was that Tom Miller, Iowa’s Attorney General, would get the CFPB position as his reward for shepherding through such a crappy settlement.

So now, with the consent decrees the apparent new plan to appear to address foreclosures without penalizing the banksters, the Administration rolls out the claim that it is considering Granholm and Raskin?

And the report is all the more weird given that Granholm was previously floated for the position in late March, at which point she declined to be considered and–the next day–accepted a position with Pew. This morning, in response to the Reuters story, Granholm tweeted,

This story says I’m under consideration for the CFPB job. I have declined to be considered for this post. I’m happy in my new roles at Pew, Berkeley and Dow. And, by the way, while I don’t know Raskin and she may be great, I think nominating Elizabeth Warren is a fight worth waging.

See, best as I can guess (and this is a guess), by pulling the plug on the AG settlement, the Administration lost its best case for appointing someone not named Elizabeth Warren to assume the CFPB position. Whereas they might have been able to claim (falsely) that Miller had achieved this great progressive settlement for homeowners, now they’ve decided to stick with the status quo rather than even a bad settlement. Which leaves them with the increasingly urgent problem of who heads the CFPB when it goes live in July.

And so they float a report that the one blond woman who is as much of a rock star as Warren is might get the position? Do they think Democrats can’t tell the difference between charismatic blonde women (or that progressives would confuse the down-to-earth but centrist Granholm for Warren)?

It’s like they’ve got a Craigslist posting up somewhere:

Wanted: blonde woman with great people skills and rock star looks to serve as figurehead for a position purported to exercise real power to protect American consumers, but which will instead be asked to serve up Timmeh Geithner coffee and complete deference. Democratic affiliation a plus but not necessary.

Share this entry

How Allowing Money Laundering Keeps Our Bubblicious Finance Afloat

/in , /by

Last June, Bloomberg did a long story on the Deferred Prosecution Agreement that Wachovia negotiated with DOJ. As “punishment” for helping Mexican drug gangs to launder more than $363 billion  through casas de cambios for three years, Wachovia had to pay $50 million fine and a $110 million forfeiture of the proceeds that were clearly from drug gangs.

In my post on Bloomberg’s article last year, I compared the size of this business (plus some other illegal ones Wachovia engaged in) to how much Wachovia was losing in mortgage shitpile.

So $373 billion in wire services (some of which were surely legal), $4 billion in bulk cash services, and some portion of $47 billion in digital pouch services (again, some of which is surely legal and may pertain to remittances). Compare those numbers to the $40 to $60 billion or so in Wachovia subprime losses Wells Fargo ate when it took over Wachovia. Was Wachovia laundering money for drug cartels because it was so badly exposed in mortgage-backed securities, or was it so heavily involved in products that could be used for money laundering just for fun?

It sure looked to me like Wachovia was covering this up–and berating their own money laundering guy who kept pointing to these transactions–because they were so deep in the shitpile.

The Guardian just did its own long story on this (h/t NC) that, among other things, confirms my suspicion there was a connection between the shitpile and the money laundering.

At the height of the 2008 banking crisis, Antonio Maria Costa, then head of the United Nations office on drugs and crime, said he had evidence to suggest the proceeds from drugs and crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to banks on the brink of collapse. “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade,” he said. “There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”

Of course, it almost certainly wasn’t just drug lords. Our banks were almost certainly overlooking other dubious cash transfers during this time, from oil dictators to the mob to illegal corporate gains.

And we couldn’t prosecute such money laundering, the Guardian article suggests, because doing so would have hastened the collapse of the bubble.

Share this entry

Out of the Mouths of Babes Real People: Just Keep Jobs Here

/in /by

The powers that be–those that give a damn about creating jobs at all (Obama’s campaign manager doesn’t)–have a bunch of tired plans for creating jobs in America: get rid of labor unions, repeal healthcare reform, cut the safety net, create green jobs (to compete against China, which has had a huge head start), improve education, reduce the deficit, persecute undocumented workers.

According to Gallup, those proposals are supported by, respectively, 1%, 1%, 1%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 5% of people recently asked an open ended question as to the best way to create jobs in the US. (h/t Gotta Laff)

The leading suggestion–one rarely talked about these days by the smart people in DC–is simply to stop shipping jobs overseas. 25% of people polled said we should just keep our manufacturing jobs here.

Mind you, this guy used to talk about ways to stop shipping jobs overseas. But that’s before he put one of the guys who has shipped the most jobs overseas in charge of job creation. And hired someone who doesn’t much care about job creation to run his reelection campaign. And committed to a NAFTA-style trade agreement with Korea.

But a solid quarter of this country still thinks the best way to create jobs is to make sure they keep the jobs they have. What a novel thought.

Share this entry

Goldman’s Lies and Jamie Dimon’s Piggy Bank

/in , /by

After a drawn out battle to liberate the records of the Fed’s discount window lending, they’ve finally been released. Bloomberg (who led the legal fight to liberate them) has made the records available here.

While it’s going to take a while for those who understand this stuff to collate the data–the Fed released individual PDFs–thus far there are two stories. First, when Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn testified to the FCIC that Goldman had only accessed the window once–and that at the request of the Fed–he appears to have not been telling the truth.

Goldman Sachs Bank USA, a unit of the company, took overnight loans from the Federal Reserve on Sept. 23, Oct. 1, and Oct. 23 in 2008 as well as on Sept. 9, 2009, and Jan. 11, 2010, according to the data released today. The largest loan was $50 million on Sept. 23 and the smallest was $1 million on the most recent two occasions.

Goldman Sachs President and Chief Operating Officer Gary D. Cohn told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission June 30 that “we used it one night at the request of the Fed to make sure our systems were linked with their systems, and it was for a de minimis amount of money.” Peter J. Wallison, a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, then asked, “you never had to use it after that?”

“No, and as I said, we used it on the Fed’s request,” Cohn replied.

Maybe now that we’ve established the principle that people should go to jail for lying like this, we can finally send a bankster to jail?

Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, observes that Jamie Dimon was serving on the Board of the NY Fed at the same time as sucking at its teat.

Under court order, the Federal Reserve today identified more banks that took loans during the financial crisis using a once-secret system that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called “welfare for the rich and powerful.”A Sanders provision in the Wall Street reform law already had forced the Fed last Dec. 1 to name banks that took trillions of dollars in emergency loans during the crisis.

“The Federal Reserve bailout was welfare for the rich and powerful and you-are-on-your-own rugged individualism for everyone else,” Sanders said. “The information released by the Fed today should never have been kept secret.  This money does not belong to the Federal Reserve; it belongs to the American people.  I applaud Bloomberg News, Fox News and others for their success in lifting another veil of secrecy at the Fed.”

Sanders said the latest disclosure raises questions about conflicts of interest. While Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, served on the board of directors of the New York Fed, in one month alone, April of 2008, JPMorgan Chase received a combined $313 billion in Fed loans.

“This is an obvious conflict of interest on its face that must be investigated as part of the independent audit that my amendment requires to be completed this summer.  When JPMorgan Chase was telling the world about their great financial success, it seems like they were using the Fed’s discount window as a giant piggy bank.”

I guess this is the kind of information about the banksters about which we little people are supposed to remain ignorant?

Share this entry

The Mackinac Center’s Assault on Academic Freedom Is a Stunt

/in , /by

As TPM first reported, MI’s institution of wingnut stupid, the Mackinac* Center, has FOIAed the labor studies departments of three universities.

A free enterprise think tank in Michigan — backed by some of the biggest names in national conservative donor circles — has made a broad public records request to at least three in-state universities with departments that specialize in the study of labor relations, seeking all their emails regarding the union battle in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, TPM has learned.

[snip]

The Mackinac Center For Public Policy, based in Midland, Mich., submitted the FOIA requests last Friday and Monday to the Labor Studies Center at the University of Michigan and the Douglas A. Fraser Center for Workplace Issues at Wayne State University. A third FOIA was directed to Michigan State University, which has a School of Human Resources & Labor Relations.

[snip]

The parameters for the request, from a version of the FOIA obtained by TPM and confirmed by Mackinac, cover emails that mention:

“Scott Walker”; “Wisconsin”; “Madison”; “Maddow”; Any other emails dealing with the collective bargaining situation in Wisconsin.

The request covers all faculty emails from “January 1, 2011 to March 25, 2011.”

Read the entire FOIA sent to UM here.

Now, there are three odd things about this FOIA that suggest it is not a serious request, but instead a stunt designed to intimidate academic and political speech and probably sow conspiracy theories.

First, as TPM alluded to but didn’t fully consider, MI recently had a high profile email FOIA decision, Howell Education Association v. Howell Board of Education–in which the Mackinac Center was involved–that found emails to be exempt from FOIA.

This is a difficult question requiring that we apply a statute, whose purpose is to render government transparent, to a technology that did not exist in reality (or even in many people’s imaginations) at the time the statute was enacted and which has the capacity to make “transparent” far more than the drafters of the statute could have dreamed. When the statute was adopted, personal notes between employees were simply thrown away or taken home and only writings related to the entity’s public function were retained. Thus, we conclude that the statute was not intended to render all personal emails public records simply because they are captured by the computer system’s storage mechanism as a matter of technological convenience.

The decision also ruled that personal emails about union actions, while a misuse of the school district’s usage policy, still constituted private messages exempt from FOIA.

Now, the Appeals Court invited the legislature to clarify whether emails should be included in FOIA. Unless I missed it (it’s possible–Lansing has been generating a lot of under-discussed shit of late), the Republicans in Lansing haven’t yet done so (and couldn’t have by the January 1, 2011 start date of the FOIA request).

So unless I’m mistaken about there being a new law on FOIA in this state, the Mackinac Center knows this FOIA is junk.

In addition, while it may or may not affect this case, MI’s universities have some of the strongest autonomy among public schools nationally. While there have mixed decisions about what this means in recent decades (usually litigated on whether MI can offer abortion coverage or same sex partner coverage to its employees), I suspect university autonomy would make this FOIA claim an even weaker case than it was in a K-12 school district.

Next, look at the terms of the FOIA:

It asked for all emails discussing:

“Scott Walker”

“Wisconsin”

“Madison”

“Maddow”

Any other emails dealing with the collective bargaining situation in Wisconsin

And the request start date is January 1, before Scott Walker was even inaugurated as Governor, and well before Scott Walker formally introduced his assault on collective bargaining on February 11.

Is the Mackinac Center trying to suggest–with a FOIA request that will go nowhere–that MI’s labor professors dreamt up the response to Walker? And dreamt up Rachel Maddow in the bargain?

Note what else doesn’t appear in the FOIA: “Snyder,” “EFM,” or “Emergency Financial Manager”–terms as least as likely to have been discussed in this state, but also terms that would clearly have even greater protection as personal emails (since the professors speaking about such topics–particularly in Wayne County, one of the targets for such legislation–would presumably have a personal, as well as a professional interest in what happens in their own state).

I don’t know what to make of this–maybe in his effort to pretend he’s not as conservative as the rest of the Republican governors ruining the Midwest, Snyder asked the Mackinac Center to exclude him–but I find it curious that a Michigan-based “think tank” isn’t asking for emails that would be more likely to appear and more relevant to the public interest of the state.

The likelihood that this is some kind of stunt seems all the more likely given the squirminess from the Center as to their purpose.

Jarrett Skorup, the Mackinac Center research associate whose name is on the FOIA, told TPM he helped write and then filed the FOIAs at the request of his bosses, but he wasn’t sure what they’d be used for in the end. He suggested the Mackinac Center was looking for chatter about the Wisconsin labor situation from state professors paid to study labor relations.

“I would imagine just to see what the people in the labor studies dept are thinking about stuff in Wisconsin,” Skorup said when asked the purpose of the FOIAs.

His boss, Mackinac Center newsletter managing editor Ken Braun, refused to comment on the FOIAs.

“I’m not going to release what we’re writing about,” he said.

I’m not trying to say this isn’t dangerous or a troubling assault on academic freedom.

But there’s something that stinks even beyond the request on its face.

*Odd as it may seem, “Mackinac” is pronounced “Mackinaw” in these parts. Since we’ll be hearing a lot more about the Mackinac Center in upcoming days, please try to get that right, because otherwise we here in MI will be screaming and holding our ears and so won’t hear what you say.

Share this entry

Mark Bittman: “I stopped eating on Monday”

/in , /by

NYT’s food columnist Mark Bittman has given up food:

I stopped eating on Monday and joined around 4,000 other people in a fast to call attention to Congressional budget proposals that would make huge cuts in programs for the poor and hungry.

By doing so, I surprised myself; after all, I eat for a living. But the decision was easy after I spoke last week with David Beckmann, a reverend who is this year’s World Food Prize laureate. Our conversation turned, as so many about food do these days, to the poor.

Who are — once again — under attack, this time in the House budget bill, H.R. 1. The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria medicine) and in programs that aid farmers in underdeveloped countries. Food stamps are also being attacked, in the twisted “Welfare Reform 2011” bill. (There are other egregious maneuvers in H.R. 1, but I’m sticking to those related to food.)

These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they’d barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now. And: The bill would increase defense spending.

Bittman doesn’t say it, of course, but just since Monday we’ve probably dropped enough bombs on Libya to offset these cuts.

We’re spending an average of $55 million a day to bomb Libyans while, as Bittman says, people here are going to bed hungry.

I don’t care where you come down on the question of whether we have a national interest in Libya or not. Until someone explains why that national interest is greater than feeding our own children, or until some decides to start taxing GE and Bank of America to pay for this, the action is illegitimate.

Share this entry

The Colonized Advises the Colonizer on What to Do When You Go Broke

/in /by

I’m catching up today, so no substantive post yet.

But in the meantime, I wanted to point to this AP piece, describing former Brazilian President Lula warning Portugal not to take the IMF bailout it’s about to be offered.

“The IMF won’t resolve Portugal’s problem, like it didn’t solve Brazil’s,” Silva said late Monday during a trip to Portugal. “Whenever the IMF tried to take care of countries’ debts, it created more problems than solutions.”

Meanwhile, current President Dilma Roussef has suggested that Brazil can help Portugal out of its mess.

Now, aside from the fact that I welcome people challenging the Euro bailouts, I think this is a bit of a notable moment. Much of the “developing” world has avoided the worst of the financial crash (though inflation is going to really hurt the poorest countries the most). And for a number of reasons, Brazil is particularly well positioned. I find it ironically symbolic.

Share this entry

Finally! Our Declining Manufacturing Base Becomes a National Security Issue

/in , , /by

I have long argued that the way to address the big problems our government is currently all-but-ignoring, not least jobs and climate change, is to talk about how our current policies put us at significant national security risk. If nothing else, by demonstrating how these are national security issues, it’ll provide a way to reverse fear-monger against the Republicans trying to gut our country for profit.

Which is why I’m happy to learn that the intelligence community is assessing whether the decline in manufacturing in the US represents a national security threat.

The U.S. intelligence community will prepare a National Intelligence Estimate on the implications of the continuing decline in U.S. manufacturing capacity, said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) citing recent news reports.

Our growing reliance on imports and lack of industrial infrastructure has become a national security concern,” said Rep. Schakowsky.  She spoke at a March 16 news conference (at 28:10) in opposition to the pending U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.The Forbes report referenced by Rep. Schakowsky was “Intelligence Community Fears U.S. Manufacturing Decline,” by Loren Thompson, February 14. The decision to prepare an intelligence estimate was first reported by Richard McCormack in “Intelligence Director Will Look at National Security Implications of U.S. Manufacturing Decline,” Manufacturing & Technology News, February 3.

Note that Schakowsky is a member of (and until January, was a Subcommittee Chair on) the House Intelligence Committee. It’s possible her own requests generated this concern.

But the concern is real. As our manufacturing moves to places like China and (significantly for this context), Korea, we’ve lost certain capabilities. Indeed, when Bush slapped tariffs on steel in 2002, a number of tool and die factories moved to Korea where they could still access cheap steel while still supplying the US market. And in recent years, the loss of highly-skilled manufacturing process capabilities has meant we face challenges in sourcing some of our key military toys.

While it shouldn’t be the primary reason to invest in manufacturing in this country, ultimately if we keep losing it we’re going to have problems sustaining our military machine.

Most of the folks running DC may not much care that our middle class has disappeared along with our manufacturing base. But convince them that our declining manufacturing base might imperil their cherished military might, and they might finally wake up.

Share this entry

Real Reason For US Deficit: GE Greed-$14.2B Profit, $0 Tax

/in , , , , , /by

For all the caterwauling from the right and, stupifyingly, from the Obama Administration and Blue Dog left as well, here is the real reason the United States has the sizable deficit issues it does (well, in addition to the fact we will not tax even rich individuals appropriately either) – our biggest corporations pay no tax. Even when they make unholy amounts of profit. From a sobering article just up at the New York Times:

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bespectacled, bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

Read the whole article and weep for your and your children’s future. And then take a moment to consider that a competent political class, that was honest about their representation of their constituents and oath to office, would have moved the country away from this reverse Robin Hood dystopia instead of moving ever further down the black hole of elite and corporate greed, robber barons and neo-feudalism.

Share this entry