Things getting back to normal as John Paulson, earns $5 billion in 2010

Year after year, workers are told that given the Present climate we have to “Tighten our belts.” Workers who are Union members have just watched their leaders spend $200 million of their hard earned dues money electing the likes of Jerry brown in California who responds with a budget that savages public services, workers and the poor. These policies lead to misery and insecurity for million of Americans and death for thousands more, deaths that are not reported as such. Many Union leaders have supported Brown’s budget calling it fair and “balanced”.

As this is happening, those wasters they refer to in the big business press as the “Masters of the Universe” due to their success in looting the wealth of the country prior to the crash are crawling back in the saddle. The Wall Street Journal reports on one of its heroes today, hedge fund manager, John Paulson. We commented on this character in a blog a few months ago. He’s the guy who made $4 billion betting “short” on subrpime mortgages. This how we described his activity:

“He was “smart” enough to look around him, maybe pay a little attention to other human beings and saw the massive stress they were under, and bet they would, under the crushing weight of the moneylenders and the rest of the capitalist class in society, be unable to pay the moneylenders their pound of flesh that they require so that we can have a roof over our heads. He's a professional gambler, and like all professional gamblers, he' doesn't like to work. His victims are the average US homeowner for one.”

John Paulson

On the other hand, this is how Gertrude Johnson, an 89-year-old woman who was still working as a health aide at the time with a $3000 mortgage that was more than she could handle, described what Paulson being able to make $4 billion meant to her:

"I just wanted to be able to eat and sleep in my house and have a roof over my head", she says "Every day at midnight when I go to sleep, I think maybe when I wake in the morning they'll tell me to get out." (1)

People like Paulson are what the capitalist media and the culture it propagates describes as a success story; the epitome of what a successful human being should be. Paulson, the Journal reports today, did even better in 2010 than he did betting that people like the 89 year-old Gertrude Johnson would be unable to pay blood money to a moneylender and be driven from her shelter. He “personally netted more than $5 billion in profits” the Journal boasts.

The gains for Paulson’s hedge fund were an astronomical 590% the year this 89 year-old woman was being terrorized by them. I can only assume that beyond Paulson, there are all the other speculators and investors that made money through investing in his deals

What’s more, it’s s not just Paulson. “Profits continue to pile up for elite hedge fund managers” today’s Journal gleefully reports. David Tepper and Ray Dalio, two other unproductive members of society “each personally made between $2 billion and $3 billion last year." There are others that made millions and then there’s the $8.35 billion in bonuses The United States of Goldman Sachs paid its traders.

And the icing on the cake is that a chunk of Paulson’s $5 billion for 2010 is treated as long-term capital gains which means it is taxed at a much lower rate than the standard income tax rate. Isn’t life good?

We have reminded readers many times that the top 25 hedge fund managers in 2006 made $15 billion. Yet here we are in 2011 with another example of three human beings who made $10 billion in a year when their politicians are denying others health care, cutting services, laying off workers and throwing people out of their homes as we are told that it is unavoidable because we are in tough economic times. The “climate” is not a good one the Union leaders tell their members as an excuse for their collaboration with the bosses’ anti-worker agenda. The climate is never a good one when it comes to workers, it never has been and it never will from the bosses point of view. We have had to fight tooth and nail for every gain we’ve made.

It’s not just the wars, general corruption and other expensive ventures that can provide the much–needed money for education, social infrastructure, jobs and more leisure through a shorter workweek. The wealth these people have is ours and we need to take it back. Not only that, their activity is parasitic. They deserve a job and a decent life like us all but not doing what they’re doing, unproductive parasitic activity that provides them with untold riches at the expense of the majority of the people.

We are taught this is sacrilege, that we cannot take what is rightfully theirs. But it is not rightfully theirs, they never earned it, they stole it. Their numerous multi million-dollar homes all over the world, they should lose them too. They have no problem taking our homes or our jobs. The recent taking of a woman’s home through eminent domain in order to provide land for Wal Mart was legal because the courts that the likes of Paulson own decided helping Wal Mart was in the public good.

These few examples prove that we can reject the idea that there is no money, that the climate is bad and that we have to accept cuts. There’s money spent on wars that are not about defending our freedoms and there’s money in the pockets of people like Paulson that we need to liberate. A crucial step that is necessary for us to begin the process of controlling our own destiny is the building an independent workers’ movement that can use our numbers and social power to bring a halt to their economic activity and an independent working people’s political party through which we can effect the political and economic make up of society.

I just glanced at the news and I see that the Egyptian dictator Mubarak has sacked his entire cabinet. Hopefully he will be next, following on the heels of his Tunisian equivalent. It gave me cause to think about the Declaration of Independence which says, among other things that “all men possess certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

That the writers of the declaration were unlikely to be including whites without property, women, Native Americans, and Africans; and the pursuit of happiness to the capitalist class is the accumulation of Capital doesn’t matter. Happiness for working people is much less exploitive and we are including all people.

It goes on to say, “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it” It even adds further that it is their “duty” to do so.

Sounds Ok to me.

(1) Wall Street Journal 3-12-07