To the US now.
The big event coming up in the US is the Mid term elections in November. It will be when voters pass judgment on Obama and the Democrats. I expect the Democrats to get a kicking. If they do and lose any workable majority then the Republicans will have the whip hand for pushing through massive nation altering changes.
Number one among them will be the push to privatize Social Security. The Republicans are salivating at the prospect and the Democrats are bitterly opposed. On paper at least. The Republicans are in favour for ideological reasons of shrinking the size of the State and cutting the so called unfunded liablilites of the Federal government. The Republicans will talk about this in terms of cutting the deficit. And cutting future deficits. The problem for the democrats is that some of them will defect to the privatize side.
The reason they will defect is because the real lobby in favour of privatizing is Wall Street. And the Democrats are as tied to Wall Street as the Republicans. What Wall Street smells is a vast new influx of cash.
Put yourselves in the shoes aof the Banks. They are still incurring losses from bad debts. They don’t really want to go throught the bruising hassle of government bailing them out again. Not because they care, but because they don’t like the bad PR. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, they are thinking, if they could get their hands on a truely vast pile of cash without it being seen as a bail out. Imagine if it were seen as helping America.
That is how they will push for privatising Social Security. They will say Social Security is going to run out of money unless is finds ways of growing by more than, and by some other method than, simply accumulating what is paid in via taxes. If Social Security, they will say, could invest prudently it could see much better returns. AND, they will smarm, the investment of this cash will give the stock market the infusion and boost it needs to secure the recovery, without the need for another bail out. It will not only be a win/win but an extra win as well! Because such a vast influx of cash into the markets could also allow a ‘more timely’ withdrawal of the very low rates that have begun to worry some in the Fed.
Surely everyone will see this as a perfect solution offering everyone an advantage. Except for one thing. It would also mean that Wall Street and its ruling banks would be in charge not only of America’s present but also its future. American citizens would find that Wall Street banks had control over their mortgages and their retirement. No aspect of their lives and hopes would lie outside Wall Street. Americans would have given their futues over to a handful of the richest and most privileged individuals on the planet. The ability of ordinary Americans to retire would have been much more tightly tied to the contuinued profitability of the Banks.
From that moment forth, to question any aspect of the Banks, powers and operations would be almost impossible. Not only mortgaes but pensions would be directly and tightly controlled by whatever actions bankers wanted to take. If government or the people tried to ‘interfere’ the bankers would hold all the levers. The government and the people woud come to them as suitors and suplicants to beg for their own wealth and future.
To my mind it would amount to a putsch. Amercian democracy would have been privatized.
The fact that Obama has already spoken out aginast the privatisation, this early in the campaign, tells me he is aware of how huge this question is. I think even a rich boy like Obama can see how dangerous this transfer of power from state to market is. How nation and history changing it would be.
Everyone was fixated on the Health debate and how much it cost. I think this is far more important for the changes it would cause to the shape and nature of Democracy in America.
If it happens, then it is over for the US as we know it. It will be a different country with a different range of futures opening before it.
What we are seeing in every nation now, is the ideologues of the right setting their sights on using shock to force through changes which will wrench our nations from one broad set of futures onto another rather different set. Shock and awe are coming home to be applied to us.