The question is: can they save Detroit? The terrorists destroying Detroit and numerous other US communities are not from Afghanistan or Iran, they are from Wall Street which is not too far from the motor city.
“Wall Street is squeezing one of America’s weakest cities for every penny it can?” writes Business Week in its November 30 issue. The article's title is: Wall Street vs America. The siege by bankers, speculators and other moneylenders is an economic one. Detroit’s unemployment rate is 28% according to official figures which means it is most likely twice that. Being weak in this way is a good thing for the Obama administrations Afghanistan surge, ther'll be more hungry working class youth whose only option for work will be the military.
The private equity lords, hedge fund managers and the like, didn’t just prey on homeowners and little old ladies; they got their teeth in to whole communities. You see, the unfortunate thing about Detroit (other than the destruction of well paying auto jobs) is that its credit rating dropped. The credit rating is not set by you or I, or the people of Detroit. Moneylenders set it; it is their condition for lending the capital that we create back to us so we can provide vital social services, infrastructure and jobs.
With its credit rating dropped, Detroit, as Business Week puts it, “Owes banks $4.2 million monthly.”
With decent paying jobs gone, Detroit is stuck trying to pay the Wall Street moneylenders their blood money with revenue from its three casinos. This blood money must be paid “before a single cent can go to schools, transportation and other critical services.” Writes BW. This is what capitalism does to a community that helped build the US economy in to a global powerhouse.
This savage onslaught by Wall Street bankers is occurring throughout the nation (and the world of course). “Local governments and related public entities, already reeling from the recession face another fiscal crisis: billions of dollars in fees owed to USB, Goldman Sachs and other financial giants on investment deals gone wrong.” Adds BW.
Wait a minute I ask myself? Haven’t we handed over trillions of dollars of our money to bail these financial firms out of the mess they created?
I read on and see that the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Authority pays nearly $1 million a month to Moneylenders Goldman Sachs and Co for “derivatives deals tied to municipal debt.” I am getting angrier by the minute.
Private equity firms and hedge funds charge fees for managing money, between one or two percent of the “total pool of assets under management” says BW which amounts to millions of dollars, and they receive this even if their advice or strategy produces losses.
So a whole community is out of work, schools are closed, buses don’t run and the only industry left in town is gambling that is set up by the same people who are receiving this blood money.
My patience is wearing thin here. Headline after headline in the mass media warns me of an invasion by Iran, a bomb from North Korea, terrorists from here and there, and the worst murderers are right under my nose and home grown.
I am not the only one angry. The moneylenders recognize that there is tremendous hatred of them in US society. They are back to their old ways after we handed a few trillion dollars to them on a platter, or more accurately, their politicians handed it over to them on our behalf. They feel they deserve it of course, Lloyd Blankfein Goldman Sachs’ CEO told the London Times recently that Goldman Sachs was doing “God’s work.”
This is a bit too blatant for some, rubbing our noses in it like that; so they’ve quieted him a bit and opened up a new front, much like their commander in Chief has done in Afghanistan, they have a two-pronged approach you see, economic and military. “To keep public outrage from reaching a boiling point, banking chiefs are embarking on a charm offensive.” Business Week tells its readers. This, “Charm Offensive”. Amounts to Blankfein promising to invest $500 million in small businesses and charities. Business Week adds that this amount is “roughly 3% of the $16.7 billion Goldman expects to pay its employees this year.” And remember, we’re not talking about employees here that produce things, this is non-productive parasitic Labor.
Detroit will be eliminating more vital services and its schools like Royal Oak, will be “eliminating after school music programs and asking parents to pay $100 per child to play sports” Business Weeks writes with hardly a quiver of the pen. After all, its not their kids that will suffer.
This is the reality of the market; this is what capitalism does. The misery and death brought about by this activity dwarfs the carnage that their former friend and partner in economic crime Osama bin Laden has wreaked on this world, nasty as he is; and it is done to us by people who say we are one, that we are “United” that we are “all in this together.” They have that "One nation indivisible" stuff out there for a reason; all nations do it to obscure the class differences and hinder class solidarity across national borders. We must recall that up until 1999, every Taliban official was on the payroll of the US government; the few thousand unelected people that run this country supported the religious fanatics, armed and fed them; they are all enemies of working people.
Their “charm offensive” proves that we are not “united”, that the anger is out there; the healthy hatred of the capitalist class and the system they govern is real. But we have to step to the plate, we have to fight back in an organized way and we have to offer an alternative. So rather than repeat it I will add some suggestions from a recent post on
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html
Part of our struggle and an alternative to the status quo is the need to break with the bosses party, the Democrats. Launching the campaign for a program that would solve working people's needs and a one day general strike and day of action (this is planned by the student movement in California that is mobilixing against the cuts ) to launch this would also lay the basis for the launching of a new mass Working Peoples Party which would be an alternative to the Democrats.
#No bail outs for Wall St. and the Banks. Take them into public ownership, nationalize them, under democratic control. .
#For a $15.00 minimum wage or $5.00 an hour increase whichever is the greater.
#No layoffs, no cuts in wages or benefits. Build Hands off our jobs, wages and benefits Committees in the workplaces.
#Not a single family or person to be evicted. For a house building program to build affordable high quality housing for all. Build Hands off our Homes Committees in the neighborhoods.
#For free education to the highest level and free health care for all at the point of use.
#End all foreign wars and occupations, bring home all troops.
# Use the wealth spent on the military and use the country's resources to build a society which provides for the needs of all in a sustainable fashion.
#Build a democratic socialist society.
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