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America the Banana Republic - (Page 94 of Arguably)

#100: Oct. - Nov. 2011 (Non-Fiction)
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America the Banana Republic - (Page 94 of Arguably)

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America the Banana Republic - (Page 94 of Arguably)

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Re: America the Banana Republic - (Page 94 of Arguably)

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Three years ago, in October 2008, Hitchens wrote this remarkably penetrating analysis of the global financial crisis, as the American economy looked likely to go into meltdown. In calling the USA a banana republic, Hitchens was arguing that a kleptocracy had acquired state power and was fleecing the public purse for its private gain.

Describing American policy as “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the rest”, he describes the comment of Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, that "the fact that investment bank holding companies could withdraw from this voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the perceived mandate" as rather like making parole restrictions entirely optional.

He says 'It’s enough to make a cat laugh' that the former bosses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have departed with $9.43 million in retirement benefits.

Complaining about the role of sheer superstition and incantation in American policy, Hitchens observes that the collapse of American infrastructure, and the failure of 'the blithering and dithering idiots at FEMA" to bring in the armed forces to save New Orleans are indicators of serious economic and social malaise.

Reader comments on the article are at http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/ ... go-bananas

Another interesting source is http://www.hitchenszone.com/
Christopher Hitchens wrote: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feat ... hens200810
Vanity Fair, October 2008

EMPIRE FALLS
America the Banana Republic
The ongoing financial meltdown is just the latest example of a disturbing trend that, to this adoptive American, threatens to put the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave on a par with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.
by Christopher Hitchens

In a statement on the huge state-sponsored salvage of private bankruptcy that was first proposed last September, a group of Republican lawmakers, employing one of the very rudest words in their party’s thesaurus, described the proposed rescue of the busted finance and discredited credit sectors as “socialistic.” There was a sort of half-truth to what they said. But they would have been very much nearer the mark—and rather more ironic and revealing at their own expense—if they had completed the sentence and described the actual situation as what it is: “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the rest.”

I have heard arguments about whether it was Milton Friedman or Gore Vidal who first came up with this apt summary of a collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can be privatized and the debts conveniently socialized, but another term for the same system would be “banana republic.”

What are the main principles of a banana republic? A very salient one might be that it has a paper currency which is an international laughingstock: a definition that would immediately qualify today’s United States of America. We may snicker at the thriller from Wasilla, who got her first passport only last year, yet millions of once well-traveled Americans are now forced to ask if they can afford even the simplest overseas trip when their folding money is apparently issued by the Boardwalk press of Atlantic City. But still, the chief principle of banana-ism is that of kleptocracy, whereby those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it. At all costs, therefore, the one principle that must not operate is the principle of accountability. In fact, if possible, even the similar-sounding term (deriving from the same root) of accountancy must be jettisoned as well. Just listen to Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as he explained how the legal guardians of fair and honest play had made those principles go away. On September 26, he announced that “the last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work.” Now listen to how he enlarges on this somewhat lame statement. It seems to him on reflection that “voluntary regulation”

was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily. The fact that investment bank holding companies could withdraw from this voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the perceived mandate of the program and weakened its effectiveness.

Yes, I think one might say that. Indeed, the “perceived mandate” of a parole program that allowed those enrolled in it to take off their ankle bracelets at any time they chose to leave the house might also have been open to the charge that it was self-contradictory and wired for its own self-destruction. But in banana-republicland, like Alice’s Wonderland, words tend to lose their meaning and to dissolve into the neutral, responsibility-free verbiage of a Cox.

And still, in so many words in the phrasing of the first bailout request to be placed before Congress, there appeared the brazen demand that, once passed, the “package” be subject to virtually no more Congressional supervision or oversight. This extraordinary proposal shows the utter contempt in which the deliberative bodies on Capitol Hill are held by the unelected and inscrutable financial panjandrums. But welcome to another aspect of banana-republicdom. In a banana republic, the members of the national legislature will be (a) largely for sale and (b) consulted only for ceremonial and rubber-stamp purposes some time after all the truly important decisions have already been made elsewhere.

I was very struck, as the liquefaction of a fantasy-based system proceeded, to read an observation by Professor Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, of the Yale School of Management. Referring to those who had demanded—successfully—to be indemnified by the customers and clients whose trust they had betrayed, the professor phrased it like this:

These are people who want to be rewarded as if they were entrepreneurs. But they aren’t. They didn’t have anything at risk.

That’s almost exactly right, except that they did have something at risk. What they put at risk, though, was other people’s money and other people’s property. How very agreeable it must be to sit at a table in a casino where nobody seems to lose, and to play with a big stack of chips furnished to you by other people, and to have the further assurance that, if anything should ever chance to go wrong, you yourself are guaranteed by the tax dollars of those whose money you are throwing about in the first place! It’s enough to make a cat laugh. These members of the “business community” are indeed not buccaneering and risk-taking innovators. They are instead, to quote my old friend Nicholas von Hoffman about another era, those who were standing around with tubas in their arms on the day it began to rain money. And then, when the rain of gold stopped and the wind changed, they were the only ones who didn’t feel the blast. Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the former bosses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have departed with $9.43 million in retirement benefits. I append no comment.

Another feature of a banana republic is the tendency for tribal and cultish elements to flourish at the expense of reason and good order. Did it not seem quite bizarre, as the first vote on the rescue of private greed by public money was being taken, that Congress should adjourn for a religious holiday— Rosh Hashanah —in a country where the majority of Jews are secular? What does this say, incidentally, about the separation of religion and government? And am I the only one who finds it distinctly weird to reflect that the last head of the Federal Reserve and the current head of the Treasury, Alan Greenspan and Hank “The Hammer” Paulson, should be respectively the votaries of the cults of Ayn Rand and Mary Baker Eddy, two of the battiest females ever to have infested the American scene? That Paulson should have gone down on one knee to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as if prayer and beseechment might get the job done, strikes me as further evidence that sheer superstition and incantation have played their part in all this. Remember the scene at the end of Peter Pan, where the children are told that, if they don’t shout out aloud that they all believe in fairies, then Tinker Bell’s gonna fucking die? That’s what the fall of 2008 was like, and quite a fall it was, at that.

And before we leave the theme of falls and collapses, I hope you read the findings of the Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration that followed the plunge of Interstate 35W in Minneapolis into the Mississippi River last August. Sixteen states, after inspecting their own bridges, were compelled to close some, lower the weight limits of others, and make emergency repairs. Of the nation’s 600,000 bridges, 12 percent were found to be structurally deficient. This is an almost perfect metaphor for Third World conditions: a money class fleeces the banking system while the very trunk of the national tree is permitted to rot and crash.

At a dinner party in New York during the Wall Street meltdown, where the citizens were still serious enough to do what they are supposed to do—break off the chat and tune in to the speech of the President of the United States and Leader of the Free World—the same impression of living in a surreal country that was a basket-case pensioner of the international monetary system was hugely reinforced. The staring eyes (close enough together for their owner to use a monocle) and the robotic delivery were a fine accompaniment to the already sweaty “Don’t panic. Don’t whatever you do panic!” injunction that was being so hastily improvised. At a White House meeting with his financial wizards—and I mean the term in its literal sense—the same chief executive is reported to have whimpered, “This sucker could go down,” or words to that effect. It’s not difficult to imagine the scene. So add one more banana-republic feature to the profile: a president who is a figurehead one day and a despot the next, and who goes all wide-eyed and calls on witch doctors when the portents don’t seem altogether reassuring.

Now ask yourself another question. Has anybody resigned, from either the public or the private sectors (overlapping so lavishly as they now do)? Has anybody even offered to resign? Have you heard anybody in authority apologize, as in: “So very sorry about your savings and pensions and homes and college funds, and I feel personally rotten about it”? Have you even heard the question being posed? O.K., then, has anybody been fired? Any regulator, any supervisor, any runaway would-be golden-parachute artist? Anyone responsible for smugly putting the word “derivative” like a virus into the system? To ask the question is to answer it. The most you can say is that some people have had to take a slightly early retirement, but a retirement very much sweetened by the wherewithal on which to retire. That doesn’t quite count. These are the rules that apply in Zimbabwe or Equatorial Guinea or Venezuela, where the political big boys mimic what is said about our hedge funds and investment banks: the stupid mantra about being “too big to fail.”

In a recent posting on The New York Times’ s Web site, Paul Krugman said that the United States was now reduced to the status of a banana republic with nuclear weapons. This is a variation on the old joke about the former Soviet Union (“Burkina Faso with rockets”). It’s also wrong: in fact, it’s the reverse of the truth. In banana republics, admittedly, very often the only efficient behavior is displayed by the army (and the secret police). But our case is rather different. In addition to exhibiting extraordinary efficiency and, most especially under the generalship of David Petraeus, performing some great feats of arms and ingenuity, the American armed forces manifest all the professionalism and integrity that our rulers and oligarchs lack. Who was it who the stricken inhabitants of New Orleans and later of the Texas coastline yearned to see? Who was it who informed the blithering and dithering idiots at fema that they could have as many troops as they could remember to ask for, even as volunteers were embarking for Afghanistan and Iraq? What is one of the main engines of integration for blacks and immigrants, as well as one of the finest providers of education and training for those whom the system had previously failed? It may be true that the government has succeeded in degrading our armed forces as well—tasking them with absurdities and atrocities like Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib—but this only makes the banana-republic point in an even more emphatic way.

Christopher Hitchens is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. Send comments on all Hitchens-related matters to [email protected].
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Re: America the Banana Republic - (Page 94 of Arguably)

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I read this article a couple times and it made me angrier with every word. :rant:

We need a gadfly of Hitch's caliber and point of view to help fight this battle and push people to do something about it. There's nothing like articles like this to call Americans to arms, so to speak. It's not enough that news stations briefly tell what's happening as if it's matter of fact and the way it is and should be.

We really need someone knocking some sense into people. I think this is why Comedy Central's News-tainment programs are so successful. I'm referring to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Both shows are invaluable right now and very, very popular.

The word socialism... all these conservative buzz words are used as an epithet like a racial slur. I was talking with someone in the Union trailer today. He said that the democracy we have right now is nothing like what the founding father's intended. I asked him what a democracy was because I wanted to see if he realized how little of a democracy we live in. He said a democracy is when, like now, the special interest groups can buy politicians. I made the mistake of saying 'f*ck' when I tried to explain to him how wrong he was... I wasn't expecting a definition of democracy so off the mark. He got truly offended. I tried to explain majority rule but he tried to over talk me and explain what democracy was instead without changing his definition of it. I again made the mistake of sayinf f*ck and he said he was going to lay hands on me and escort me to the Operational Manager's desk because I was so profane. I don't feel I need to mention this because of this site's tiresome religious discussions, which have threatened to all but highjack the site, but he backed it all up with, "I'm filled with the holy ghost." He was full of something... I got up and left.

Someone came to me later on and sat down next to me while I was working. He said, "You know you really shouldn't talk about religion and politics." My immediate reply was, "When? All the time? With whom? No one? Not even family? And Where? Just not here or nowhere?" He had a perfect answer that took me a little off guard...,"Not with people like him."

I'm a firm believer in argument. Talking is better than violence and moderate violence is far better than silence which can lead to some nasty sh*t that lasts a loooong time and only hampers the search for truth.

I had to sit on the answer he gave me. It *binged* in my head like it was correct so I started to attack it in my mind. Is it really better not to engage such a person? I feel the truth is only discovered and held, reborn, strengthened, and HELD! through constant open debate and constant open/honest attacks on it in the form of inquiry. In short, if the truth is allowed to be discovered, discourse can only strengthen it in my opinion. For this person, though... I can only imagine them 'riding the tide' and offering little to promote truth. I don't have the knowledge, insight, or charisma to persuade someone who is filled with ghosts. I'm not Venkman.

The article makes several points - with the Fema debacle as the icing on this sh&t sandwich - OMG. It's hard to read this and look other people in the face without wondering... you thinking what I'm thinking???? And most of them aren't!!!! How is this stuff allowed to happen? Why aren't we ashamed of it?

You can only have pride, true pride, when it's based on truth. When this stuff gets covered up and we talk about 'liberating' so and so and 'patriot' and 'hero' and '9/11' and jeez... we're all brainwashed. Greatest Country on earth... I've never heard anyone ever ask 'WHY?' after someone has said this. You'd probably get a different answer for nearly every different person and I'd bet, as I am constantly when talking with people, surprised at what they have to say.

Why do people have such different answers??? Because they don't talk with one another anymore about these issues. Our system doesn't want it. "You shouldn't talk about religion and politics." How many people have you heard spout out this garbage? Today wasn't the first time I've heard it. It's complete garbage and completely engrained in our culture. How can you have democracy without constantly talking about such topics??? How can you hope to have a democracy with this type of thinking? People need to learn to control their passions is all. That garbage needs to be replaced with "control your passions" or some other such advice which is in the same vein.

I know Hitch is a very talented and persuasive writer. He has the ability, like any emotionally persuasive writer, to make someone feel what he intends them to feel. That's why these articles need to be thoroughly investigated, as they should be. The sad thing is... this sh&t sandwich is a mere appetizer compared to the buffet he's neglected to serve.

10 million dollars for failure, optional supervision, infrastructure falling apart... wtf... Are we desperately attempting to maintain the illusion of wealth or are we attempting to create two distinct classes of people? Just look at businesses... ALL CONSOLIDATING. It's a scary thing.

Next time someone tries to explain to you economies of scale, I'd like you to ask them what 'freedom has a price' means. See if they say 'death' before they say anything regarding protecting the individual store owner.
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