Dear Igor,

My grandpa is in the garage cleaning out his combination orgone box/fallout shelter. He says that George W. Bush is planning to use his last gasp of presidential breath to get even with all the liberals, workers, minorities, secularists, environmentalists, journalists, economists, scientists, entertainers, politicians, psychologists, foreigners, veterans, gays, retirees, Muslims–in other words, just about everybody in the world–who opposed, criticized, ridiculed or rejected him. Grandpa says he’s locking himself in his shelter and not coming out until Obama is safely in office. I say he is way paranoid. Bush is an addled, but well-meaning incompetent, who will go quietly to his brush pile in Crawford.
Who is right?
Realist,
Verity, Pa.

Dear Realist,

Grandfather knows best, while you, my way gullible friend, prove the axiom that a realist is someone who thinks everyone is as crudely obvious as he is.

Put yourself in Bush’s place. (If you can accomplish this relatively simple task of empathic imagination.) For the last eight years everything you’ve done has been horribly wrong. You have been exposed and embarrassed time and time again. Your malaprops and misspeaking, your non-grasp of major issues, your pariah status among world leaders, your ritual shunning by John McCain have all been revealed in the harsh glare of the global spotlight. Scholars soberly estimate that you will be considered the worst president in history.

Would you not harbor thoughts of bloody revenge?

But this is nothing compared to the battering you’ve taken from within your own camp. Since the early 20th. Century when the Walker-Bush dynasty joined with the Rockefellers and the Dulles brothers in league with Prussian industrialists, Saudi rulers, and British bankers to control the flow of oil and finance, no leader, including Herbert Hoover, has done as much harm to the cause as you have.

Who will cut you into sweetheart deals? Ignore your mulligans? Eat your three alarm chile?

And it all started so well. Given what you constantly called “political capital” by the 2004 victory you began advancing your domestic agenda under cover of back-door dealing, Rove-like obfuscation and officialese.

Your unfunded No Child Left Behind was an attempt to push voucher schools at the expense of the public educational system which over the years, has produced the major opponents of your class conspiracy.

Your legislation, exempting 6.5 million workers from collecting overtime, was an attack on the trade unions, who are the only defenders of the wealth-producing classes. Its intended effect was to impoverish workers and make them easier to exploit

You passed a law making it prohibitive for an individual to declare bankruptcy. You said too many people were making fraudulent misuse of the existing statutes. But statistics showed that 50% of bankruptcies were caused by inability to pay medical expenses and the 40% by long term unemployment in outsourced industries. Only 3.6% were alleged to be fraudulent.

You bailed out your blood brothers in finance-perhaps hoping for a cushy post-Presidential job- but have refused to allow one penny of the $700 billion to guarantee delinquent mortgages on the grounds that people (not bankers, who are presumably aliens) should have to pay for their mistakes. You’ve given AIG $85 billion fix and just shot them up again for $40 billion more. But not a penny for the auto industry. You say Detroit shouldn’t be rewarded for years of mismanagement, which you define as paying workers too much in salaries, pensions and health care. If Detroit goes bankrupt the union contracts will be inoperative and one of the most cherished dreams of your class—the destruction of the UAW—will be fulfilled.

Now it has all turned to ashes. The popular revulsion against you has led to the election of a man who will overturn every one of your overturnings. Not since FDR has a leader been given such a mandate to attack wealth and privilege. The CEO as hero will cease to be a cultural icon. No more “workaholic tycoons” on the cover of Time Magazine.

Your own class has turned against you. You went, scrapbook in hand, to one university after another, looking for a home for your Presidential Library, which after Cheney has censored it, will consist of a few Christmas cards and Laura’s recipe for Hopping John. You were turned down everywhere until daddy’s arm-twisting in Dallas got you a grudging admission to SMU. But even in the center of Bush power, a committee of professors, rose up to condemn the library.

How does it feel to be on your own?… A complete unknown? You can answer Dylan’s question: Not great!

Now, it’s your turn. “Little Georgie tries so hard,” your dad, the baseball hero said, watching you muff one grounder after another.

Well now Little Georgie, burning with humiliation, is going to smash his tormentors as hard as he can. Look for vindictive lame duck rule changes. For presidential pardons to be granted to the most odious corporate felons. Do not rule out an “inadvertent nuclear accident,” or “sudden, inexplicable eruption” in the watersheds of NY, LA and Chicago of chemicals which cause hair loss and impotence.

We should have a nationwide alert: All infants and elderly people: everyone with a health issue; teachers, union members, aw hell, everybody…

Stay indoors and boil your drinking water until January 21.

Dear Igor,

My cellmate, Jeff Skilling, here at Waseca Federal Penitentiary, says the “so-called bailout” is a conspiracy by Goldman Sachs to rule the world. Is this paranoia or fact?

Worried Lifer
Cellblock D

Dear Worried Lifer,

This is fact.

But first, a little background. The wealthy have been seeking to undermine the idea of Democracy since its inception. The notion that the collective action of yeomen, scribes and servants could prevail violates the elite’s equation of power:

Property+Capital+Might=Dominance.

Socrates questioned the Greek pseudo-democracy as the “rule of some one person or very few.” He was accused of impiety and subversion and sentenced to death. The Greek empire was subsequently overrun by Roman barbarians.

After the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Roman Emperors systematically eviscerated the Senate and all democratic institutions. Rome was later overrun by Goths and vandals.

There ensued a period of 15 hundred years in which the world was ruled by corrupt clerics and hemophiliac, schizoid, deviant monarchs, while their vassals expropriated all the land, treasure, social and cultural capital; and doled out patronage to their groveling favorites.

At the start of the American Revolution, the anti-democratic Loyalists, most of whom were of the wealthy merchant class, fled to Canada where they have been sniping at the US ever since.

The French Revolution had a short life of bloodshed and intrigue and was quickly overrun by Royalists and Emperors– then imploded into a series of fragmented “Republics” that had no national unity.

Southern slave owners sought to spread their feudal system across a growing nation. They were stymied by Lincoln. His elimination was guaranteed when he threatened to fully realize the equality promised in the Constitution.

During the “Gilded Age” financial capitalism made its first attempt to take over the country. Jay Gould’s move to corner the silver market ended in “Black Friday” and a major financial panic.

From then on a pattern was established. Financiers would manipulate markets and bribe politicians to expand their wealth. Soon, the value created by the productive classes would be unable to support the inverted pyramid of baseless speculation. The system would collapse, impoverishing millions. After a last minute intervention (J.P. Morgan 1907, FDR 1932, RTC, 1989) a slow recovery would take place. Once again the financiers would build capital and public trust in preparation for their next coup d’etat.

Petroleum added a new arrow to the quiver of the elite. Beginning with the Teapot Dome Scandal of the ’20′s oil and government became linked. The Rockefellers and the Dulles brothers started a revolving door between government ( CIA, State Dept.) and the oil business.

As oil controlled foreign policy, finance sought to shape the national economy. Again, heedless speculation led to the Great Depression of 1929. FDR’s New Deal was designed to change the emphasis of Government from insulating the consumers of wealth to protecting those who produced it. Social Security, which guarantees a modest pension to elderly workers, became the bete noire of the moneyed elite. On the very day of its creation a conspiracy was launched against it. The financier who climbed the heights and vanquished the beast would be celebrated in song and story…

Goldman Sachs has dispatched its double agents to fulfill what it describes as its “great tradition of public service.” The list of Goldman partners who have gone into Government is long and illustrious. Beginning with partner Henry Fowler in the ’60′s, they have served both parties as Treasury Secretaries.

Partner Robert Rubin was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. During his tenure he managed to repeal the Glass Steagall Act passed during the Depression, which separated investment and commercial banks. This opened up hundred of billions of dollars of new business for the firm. Goldman partner Stephen Friedman was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Partner Jon Corzine is Governor of New Jersey. Partner Robert Zoellick was US Trade Representative and is now President of the World Bank…The list is endless, Worried Lifer, trust me.

With every infiltration into Government Goldman’s wealth has increased. But its most daring coup came with the appointment of CEO Henry Paulson as Secretary of Treasury. During Paulson’s tenure as CEO (1999-2006) Goldman acquired an $18 billion exposure to subprimes and billions more in derivatives. Goldman was in the forefront of the movement to privatize Social Security, which would have added trillions more in profit. In 2002 Goldman analysts were accused of producing biased reports to benefit corporate clients.

A teetotaling Christian Scientist college football hero, Henry Paulson was the ideal double agent. He spent his early days trying to reassure the public and the Congress that the economy was recovering while his colleagues worked feverishly to liquidate bad debts. When that didn’t work he bailed out Bear Stearns. When that didn’t stem the tide of failure he got Fed Chairman Bernanke to release billions to the banks. But they hoarded the newfound money and refused to lend it to failing investment houses and hedge funds.

Paulson let Lehman Brothers, Goldman’s biggest competitor, go under, and thus got more business for the firm.

But when AIG started to totter he had to intervene to protect Goldman’s $25 billion investment in its defunct derivatives operation. He paid $85 billion dollars for 79.9% of AIG, a bargain basement price for a trillion dollar company. I am betting that soon some investor (maybe Goldman Sachs?) will offer $100 billion for the steal of the century.

Paulson’s most audacious move was yet to come. In a last ditch effort to save the fortunes of a few thousand very wealthy individuals he gave Congress a two and a half page proposal in which he asked for a blank check of $700 billion to save the banks. In a backhanded afterthought he said this might help the millions of mortgage holders as well.

He tried scare tactics. He tried a charm offensive. He even made the surprising tactical error of getting a discredited President into the act.

So far genius of the American system seems to have beaten him back.

But don’t be fooled. The financial conspirators are regrouping.

They’ll be back.