Welfare is OK when it’s welfare for the capitalist class

Left: Figuring out how to help their banker friends

In its June 22nd edition, Business Week, a serious journal of capitalism, has an article about the banks. “A reality Check On the Banks” is the title of the article. As most of us that follow politics in any way at all are aware there is an ongoing war, a debate if you like, between sections of the capitalist class about how to move their system forward; about how to ensure the mistakes they made that almost brought the system down can be avoided in the future.

What they want to avoid is what happened last year in the early stages of the crisis when they “poured” private capital in to the banks, “figuring the worst was over” as BW puts it. Lehman failed and the banks had to eat in to their reserve funds to pay the piper. With the banks funds deleted, the taxpayer stepped in and bailed them out.

The US government has allotted some $11 trillion of taxpayer’s money to bail out capitalism. While they are telling us that things have improved, there are still trillions of dollars of bad loans on the books and capitalists will not invest as long as this situation exists. Banks still hold about $1 trillion in commercial real estate loans and, by many economists’ predictions, commercial real estate will be the next “subprime” crisis.

The article is very informative in this regard---telling us the truth about their system and the potential pitfalls. “Corporate loans, credit card debt, and construction loans also continue to sour in the face of the recession,” writes Business Week.

What is interesting about this particular article is their honesty. It is an honesty we don’t find in the mass consumption press, the very censored US media that they serve to the vast majority of us; they are speaking to each other in Business Week you see; they don’t have to lie.

“The government had to come to the rescue.” Says Marvin Miller about the bailout. Miller is a strategist of capital, a theoretician for them; someone who helps guide them through the ups and downs of their system. He doesn’t call them welfare queens and lazy bums for taking government money like he would a worker, a single mother or unemployed person.

Business Week is concerned about profits. They are built on a “rocky foundation” it says. They are worried about profits because they are up (yes they are up) but primarily because they used their control of political life and the government to change what they call, “accounting rules.” Do you remember Enron and the crisis with Anderson, the bookkeeping company? When they steal billions it is described as an“accounting error.” Go back and read the papers, you’ll see what I mean, same with MCI/WorldCom.

These accounting rule changes helped them pass the capital requirements the Obama administration forced on the banks due to pressure form a very angry public. Another aspect of these “accounting rule” changes allowed bankers to value the “toxic assets” (loans that can’t be repaid) they have on the books themselves as opposed to them being valued by market forces.

What this accomplished was quite amazing. It enabled the “big banks to engineer a boffo quarter” writes BW. I am not sure what “Boffo” means. But I can understand this: Bank of America made $4.2 billion in profits the first quarter of this year and Wells Fargo earned $3.05 billion.

But here’s what gets me. The government “came to the rescue” writes Business Week. But when the government “comes to the rescue” for workers, that’s “communism.”
People on welfare are savaged by the bankers and the strategists of capital for not going to work, for not “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” as George Bush has done (snicker, snicker). Any state intervention that provides social services or aid to the poor; to youth the aged or the unemployed, this is failure. This is “big government” and it breeds dependency and laziness. Public expenditure for jobs or education or anything that benefits the working classes is savagely attacked using their control of the mass media.

The market is the answer to all things, they tell us during those times when they are making money. Health care” Let the market decide. Education? Privatize it. The postal service? Let the market deal with it and take it out of the hands of those lazy public sector workers.

But the capitalists actually ask for and get, government guarantees for their investments. In other words, they can invest in their precious marketplace and if they lose their money, the taxpayer will reimburse them. What a sweet deal.

Big government is only bad when it helps the working class. When it gives us housing or education or swimming pools in the community or help for the aged and disabled. When it helps them they love it.

And it mostly helps them.

The government is their government. This does not mean that we can’t win concessions from it; force them to spend more of the national pie on workers than capitalists. We won public education. We won sick leave and unemployment pay. But they are after destroying those gains. They were won in the past during periods of great social upheaval and class conflict.

If we want to keep them and, as we should, expand on them. We have to learn some lessons here. We have to reject the propaganda of their media. We have to reject their two political parties. We have to build an in dependent movement that challenges their rule and their ownership and control of society’s resources. What Business Week tells us is that everything they tell us is phony. They are the biggest welfare recipients, the biggest thieves, and the biggest liars.

Damn it! We have to change the whole shebang.