Just How Much Is $9 Trillion?

"On December 1, the Fed was forced to release details of 21,000 funding transactions it made during the financial crisis...The Fed has thus far reported, without even disclosing specifics of its lending from its discount window, which it continues to draw a dark curtain around, that it supplied, in total, more than $9 trillion to Wall Street firms, commercial banks, foreign banks, corporations and some highly questionable off balance sheet entities.

The data starkly show a comatose Wall Street being resuscitated with whatever financial might the Federal Reserve could pump into its tangled web of funding vehicles. It also points to how the Fed was dispersing sums which dwarfed the U.S. Treasury’s $700 billion TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) bailout program while allowing the TARP to take the media heat for obscene funding of Wall Street."

Read the full story by Pam Martens: The Tax-Payers' Tab: a Cool $9 Trillion and Then Some

Hmmmm...maybe this is a more appropriate image?

Credits:
Photomontage and background image: mark swindle | design-ia
stack of money: http://www.worldofstock.com/closeups/BCO2576.php
his Trump-ness: http://suburbarazzi.lohudblogs.com/category/donald-trump/
moonrise: http://vjac.free.fr/skyshows/raysshadows/moonrises/2009jan10_moonrise/2009jan10_moonrise_2.jpg
leaning forward: http://utopianvision.co.uk/pictures/diya-mirza/2644/
If you stack one million one dollar bills on top of each other how tall would it be?: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/964254

Cheney Dodges the Bullet Again

All 16 charges filed by the Nigerian government against Dick Cheney were dropped yesterday after Halliburton agreed to pay an out-of-court settlement of $250 million. Last year one of Halliburton's units, KBR, reached a settlement of $579 million in US courts on charges of paying $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials during the years Cheney headed Halliburton.¹

To put this into perspective: if you or I get charged with a speeding ticket, we can do something that amounts to the same thing. You give the court $50 or $100 and you can get the violation cleansed from your record. In effect it's saying "Yes, I'm guilty, but take some of my money and let's pretend this whole sordid business never happened."²

Corporations do the same sort of thing: in exchange for avoiding the long, costly and embarrassing testimony of a trial, they can reach an out-of-court settlement. In this case a quarter-of-a-billion dollars.

This made me wonder…

Why would the Nigerian government agree to such a settlement?
As with almost every other Third World country whose resources are sought after by the Americans, Russians, Europeans or Chinese, the use of bribes to buy out administrative officials within the target country is nothing new; once bought they do what they can to facilitate resource extraction - including suppression of labor, health and environmental concerns and parties. Perhaps some of these same officials were part of the group that reached the agreement. Long story short: don't want to bite the hand that feeds you. Just slap it.

Also consider this: even if there had been a criminal conviction, because of a lack of effective mechanisms to enforce a conviction across international boundaries - especially when you're talking about the likes of the United States or, say, Israel - Nigeria's acceptance of the settlement offer was probably just a common sense decision: although the US is willing to bend over backwards to get its mitts on Julian Assange (and allows rendition of terror suspects to countries known to torture) you'd better believe it won't let one of its own be given up to the likes of Nigeria - or the ICC for that matter.


Why would Halliburton pay such a huge sum to avoid the trial of its former president  - and former Vice-President of the United States?
Between 1994 and 2004, Halliburton is charged with paying $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in contracts for the Bonny Island liquefied natural gas facility. Hell…that's only $1 in bribes for every $33 of contract, shaving a mere 3% of the profit margin. ³

It may have helped that former President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker III interceded on Cheney's behalf. Why, you may wonder, would a former President and Secretary of State step forward to stop the prosecution (and, one would hope, the imprisonment) of the former corporate executive and Vice-President of the United States? Perhaps they are gay lovers and don't like the idea of Dick getting sodomized by a prison full of angry Nigerian Black men? Nawwww…it's probably nothing quite this personal and has a lot more to do with Nigeria's rank as the world's 11th largest oil producer. America would be like a whiny junkie if its oil supply was to be disrupted.⁴

What does such a settlement represent?
An out-of-court settlement isn't necessarily an admission of guilt, true: often the corporate defendant will crunch the cost-benefit numbers and offer a settlement even in the case of innocence. With an endless barrage of litigation targeted at the company, Halliburton may simply have wanted to avoid a further tarnishing of its image...though if you were already accused of assisting in the gang rape of a continent, pissing oil in the oceans, and ripping off taxpayers in one colossal con after another, what the hell would you care about further cementing your image in the Halls of Infamy? Maybe a better explanation is that to Halliburton the settlement amount is a paltry sum, and that a conviction here would have opened the door to convictions elsewhere. They can't kill all the witnesses to their crimes - not that I'm accusing them of murder, especially since it would be much easier to have paid-off officials do the dirtywork.

Of much greater concern is the lack of accountability on the environmental wreckage of the Niger River Delta by the oil and gas companies. During the months following the Deepwater Horizon blowout, Nigerians were perplexed at the severity of reaction against BP, since its Delta "has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates."⁵ Hence this represents once again the absence of justice in one of the most severe environmental catastrophes on the African continent.

Business as usual, it seems. Corporations (and their helmsmen) consistently get off the hook, no matter how egregious their crimes. As Dr. Sezneva remarked "In an era of increasing multi-national corporate control, we can expect more and more of this in years to come."


1 Nigeria to drop Dick Cheney charges after plea bargain

2 Sweden appeals UK granting bail for Julian Assange: This Very Bad Man's bail bond was set at a paltry $316,000!

3 Halliburton: Wikipedia reports, however, that the Halliburton subsidiary paid only a paltry $2.4 million - or a rate of return of $2500 for every $1 of bribes. Wikipedia

4 Oil Reserves in Nigeria: "Although Libya has more reserves,  there were 36.2 billion barrels (5.76×10^9 m3) of proven oil reserves in Nigeria as of 2007,  ranking the country as the largest oil producer in Africa and the 11th largest in the world,  averaging 2.28 million barrels per day (362×10^3 m3/d) in 2006. At current rates this would be 43 years of supply if no new oil was found." Wikipedia

5 Far From Gulf,  a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old, June 16, 2010 the New York Times

Photos:
Photo montage and Bakersfield oil field photo: Mark Swindle | design-ia

Cheney photo: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/cheney-spokesperson-bp.php

Bush Sr photo: http://americanhistory.about.com/od/uspresidents/ig/Images-of-US-Presidents/George-H-W-Bush.htm

Bush Jr photo: http://connect.in.com/george-bush-jokes/photos-1-1-1-1256e192787a1693e8171e8bf300d845.html

James Baker photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JamesBaker.jpeg

Niger oil spill: Austin Ekeinde/Reuters http://brightnepenthe.blogspot.com/2010/06/scoping-problem-and-petroleum-industry.html

The Toppling of the Statue

CHICAGO - Bankrupted by The Endless Wars...

IRAQ WAR:

AfGHANISTAN WAR:

WAR ON DRUGS:


...citizens performed an enraged Americanized version of the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein of April 9, 2003, using commandeered construction equipment and explosives on the Sears Tower (aka the "Willis Tower"), the famous Chicago landmark. Spearheaded by the ad hoc Citizens for Economic, Political and Social Justice (CEPSJ), the effort capped weeks of street protests venting pent-up frustration over the failed wars, the appropriation of funds from education, health and infrastructure; and a deeply-rooted multi-generational hatred of corporate behavior. "We thought the bad guys were over there...you know Sodom Hussein, Obama sin Lad-de-da or whatever his name was...where the hell did he go, anyway?..." remarked the unemployed construction worker who wired the detonating caps at the southwest corner, "...but it sure seems the real Bad Men are in the boardroom."

Miriam Falltower, laid off 2 years ago from her CPS teaching position and selected to press the button due to her most-appropriate last name concurred: "First the class size went up and the benefits down. Then the job disappeared altogether. The final straw was the tax cuts passed last week the President had to dish up to the Republicans in exchange for unemployment benefits extension. A tax cut for the richest? That's it! I'm fed up with the Iraqi War and the Afghan War and War on Drugs and the war on this and the war and that...it's time for a goddamned class war!" she yelled to the cheers of the crowd around here.

"I always kind of thought this building was an eyesore," remarked Daniel Rightangle - an architecture grad whose tuition costs will saddle him with over $100,000 of debt, "though I'm not the kind who advocates destruction just out of aesthetic distaste. This thing was a symbol. I'm sure we'll all end up labeled as terrorists...but, you know, I'm fed up with anyone not agreeing with the status quo being called a "terrorist!"

In a modern-day application of swords-into-plowshares, the building materials will go into the construction of schools, neighborhood medical facilities and continuing education/re-training centers, while the vacated site will house a think tank dedicated to peaceful problem-solving, international cooperation and a rethinking of failed US policies.

Terror Alert

It’s not about the truck bomb, it’s the bananas*
On May 7 the Sundance Channel pulled Day Night Day Night, a film by Julia Loktev (pictured here), from its schedule a few days after the explosives-packed Pathfinder was found in Times Square. The movie follows a 19-year old female suicide bomber - planning to self-detonate in Times Square - through 48 hours of tension, training and doubt - without revealing her reasons for taking on the task. In contrast to a plethora of shit-kicker thrillers wherein the audience gets to extract revenge, years later, for 9-11 by proxy-punching-in-the-face, kicking-in-the-balls and otherwise giving a merciless ass-fucking to The Bad Guys, this one is much much more ambiguous. And, therefore, more threatening to a country hellbent on throwing the responsibility for thoughtful politics into the garbage disposal ever since.

In the hours following the attacks on the financial and military symbols of American power, I maintained a naive hope the events might serve as a wake-up call for America to re-access the impact of its decisions on the rest of the world. While I didn't find it difficult at all to comprehend why much of the world hates the US, perhaps it was possible the shock of these acts might jolt the mainstream political discourse into some awareness of the desperation and anger that make terrorism an option. In the days following, I abandoned this hope completely: while billing itself as a Christian nation (and, therefore, it seemed, one obligated to forgiveness), America had nothing other than bloodlust and revenge in mind, and has spent the last 9-plus years exacting it.

There were bright spots. RETHINK, a 7-pound volume that "confronts our diversity,  our stupidity and cleverness,  our preoccupations and rage,  our laughter and desperate tears,  our need for justice and love,  our thirst for blood and power" was a thought-provoking attempt to learn from 9-11 - instead of merely reacting with the most base of instincts. Granta 77 explored the roots of anti-Americanism. And Loktev's movie imparted a sense of empathy for those who undergo the experience of volunteering for a dead-end action without passing judgment on their decision to do so. By not answering the question Why is she doing this? the viewer is compelled to ask Why would anyone want to do this? And because she is not demonized, there is a freedom to consider this question with impartiality and clear-headedness.

And this is precisely why it was dead-wrong for Sundance to pull the movie when it did: it is situations like the attempted bombing in Times Square where we should be wondering why someone would want to do this, and what has been done to get them there. Then, as a free nation, to make adjustments in thought, policy and action. And this is also why the documents released by WikiLeaks - chronicling the machinations of the US over this period - need to see the light of day.

Julia's first movie, Moment of Impact, examined the consequences of an event on April Fool's Day, 1989, when her father was struck by a car. Her forthcoming movie, The Loneliest Planet, starring Gael García Bernal and Hani Furstenberg is a minimalist thriller set in the Republic of Georgia.


*An extract from What Makes Julia Loktev, the Director of a New Movie About a Female Suicide Bomber, Tick? in the NYMag. The full quote: "One Chechen girl in Moscow blew up a truck bomb by running it into a convoy,  but before she did,  she stopped and bought some bananas, ” explains Loktev. “I thought,  It’s not about the truck bomb,  it’s the bananas.” Or the pretzel. In Day Night Day Night,  Williams stands in front of the Duane Reade on 42nd Street,  eating one. With mustard."


Sources/Links:
1 Media Decoder: Sundance Channel Pulls a Film About a Times Square Suicide Bomber
2 NY Mag: What Makes Julia Loktev, the Director of a New Movie About a Female Suicide Bomber, Tick?
3 IMDB: Julia Loktev, Day Night Day Night, Loneliest Planet

Secrets Inside

The Wikileaks saga is provoking thoughtfulness on the nature of secrets.
We tend to forgive those who may have violated an oath of secrecy - as Daniel Ellesburg did with the release of what were to become known as The Pentagon Papers - if we sense good intentions. Linda Tripp, on the other hand, is not being smiled on by history, since her efforts to tease the secrets of a Presidential infidelity from Monica were asbout as far from noble as it's possible to sink.

Julian Assange came out of hiding this week and voluntarily turned himself in for questioning (and incarceration) after months of hiding. So, too, Mr Ellsburg, who (understandably) was in fear of his life: only after the Watergate scandal did it become known that the Nixon Administration - unable to combat the truth of what was revealed in the documents - attempted instead to smear his reputation by using the same team that bungled the Watergate burglary to break into the office of Ellsburg's psychiatrist, hoping to locate evidence of an unhinged mind. Unlike Ellsburg, it's not yet possible to know Assange's innocence...though headlines of "sex crimes," "rape" and "molestation" seem so far removed from the latest assessment - that his failure to use condoms transmogrified the liaison into non-consensual sex - gives food for charges of "smear campaign." I'm not sure that WikiLeak's release of the State Department's documents led to a plan by the American and/or Swedish governments to actively bait-and-trap Assange, but I am sure that this diverts attention away from the much larger topic of state secrets - and what they tell us about the gulf between what governments (and corporations*) say and what they think and do.

A second standard by which whistleblowers are evaluated is the effect of the secrets they release. One has to wish that WikiLeaks had access to White House and Downing Street conversations in 2003: unlike Tripp's revelations - which crippled a Presidency by appealing to a darker part of our Nature (Puritanical outrage) - knowledge of the effort to scam the public into support of an expedition that had no legal or factual underpinning might have prevented or, at least, minimized the impacts, of the Iraqi War.

The telling of a secret can be cathartic. Someone undergoing chemotherapy - as my father is - might try to muscle through the experience in silence, but that's too hard a road to go on your own, and once the secret's out, the outpouring of love and support can be enormous. Lifesaving, even. Divulging a secret about an STD takes on a slightly different feel because a moral thread is there for anyone who wants to grab onto i; for example a statement like "I have Hepatitis C" invariably makes the listener wonder "Are you an IV drug user?" That makes keeping this sort of secret even more stressful for its keeper.  "Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone'll discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn’t it the secret that’s using you?"¹ In Alex van Warmerdam's Abel the father's infidelity with the woman who his son has taken as a lover slumps deliciously, giddy and uncaring after everything comes out into the open. Even if he has been more or less destroyed in the process.

Several years back the man with whom I share a father let me in on a family secret. Its release caused not so much catharsis as belly laughter then sadness - both from the scope of the misunderstanding. It had to do with the use of a 4-syllable word I'd flung at him (the father) many years ago when - it seemed to me - he fell flat at coming through on a promise. In my mind these longer expressions utterly trump their 4-letter counterparts...there are so many inflections possible: the Mother- can be a slowly-spoken lead-in to its more-vulgar trailing term; they can both be delivered machine-gun style; one can channel the delivery style used in Blaxploitation films. Endless possibilities! But what if your listener takes a literal interpretation of the insult? And for years the lines you deliver - "Dad, I love you" or "What is going on with your software these days?" goes into their ears with a "Yeah, but you think I shagged my mother!" always tacked onto the end of it. I'm left wondering which caused more damage: this vulgarity, or all of his letters to me I sent back a few days later. And of how much smaller  the rift might have been had everything been brought out into the open.

This is only one of many secrets we have as a family and like other families there's always a constant weighing of what's to be gained vs. how much damage could be done with their release. In the case of Wikileaks you have former Presidential contender calling for the execution of Assange² - but not calling for an investigation of the war crimes committed by the Administration that have led to an excess of 100,000 deaths.

The Photo: This is a 2006 portrait taken of my father, George Swindle, who's possessed of a truly brilliant mind and an unequivocally good heart. Needless to say our relationship has had a lot of ups and downs, but never with any lapse in the love, affection or irritation we feel for each other.I picked this because it suggests the opacity, guardedness and inscrutability I've known - and loved - him for - as well as the thoughtfulness he summons before speaking.

*Netherlands-based Royal Dutch Shell's infiltration of the Nigerian government - and the corresponding green light to engage in the destruction of the Niger River Delta - came to light this week as part of the latest release of documents by WikiLeaks

¹ From Back Swan Green, by David Mitchell.
² "Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty," he told reporters while signing books at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, Calif. [Huffington Post]

Ellsburg Redux

The VietNam War and the Iraq War bear striking similarities. Both were begun under highly questionable pretexts (as many wars are - e.g. the sinking of the USS Maine, which led to the Spanish American War in 1898; Nazi Germany's efforts to "liberate East Prussia from Poland) with the Gulf of Tonkin incident used by President Johnson, in 1964, to authorize the use of American forces against North Vietnam; and a claim that Saddam Hussein's government (first) had ties to AlQaeda, later replaced by claims of evidence of WMD's leading to the invasion that began in March, 2003.

Both were incredibly costly. Nearly 7 years later - at a cost in excess of $700 billion* and between 100,000 and 150,000 dead - the Iraqi conflict remains unending, Iraq a shambles, anti-American extremists invigorated, and the reputation of the U.S. at historical lows. In the 9 years between its outbreak and the Paris Peace Accord of January, 1973, the VietNam War's cost was also in the hundreds-of-billions, and casualties at approximately 2 million. America suffered its first war time defeat.

On June 13, 1971, the NY Times published its first excerpts from The Pentagon Papers. These were a set of documents leaked by Daniel Ellsburg, who had high-level access to the complete set of documents under study by a commission appointed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Ellsburg went into hiding after their release. The Nixon Administration tried a number of strategies - court orders¹; a direct request from the President; and repeated attacks on his character - including a break-in at his psychiatrist's office by the same group, The White House Plumbers, who were later convicted of the break-in to DNS Headquarters - i.e. Watergate. When Ellsburg eventually surrendered to authorities, he had this to say:

I felt that as an American citizen,  as a responsible citizen,  I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.

The Pentagon Papers fed anti-war sentiment by showing that the US government deliberately misled its citizens in regard to expectations of costs and casualties of the war. Evidence of covert actions - including massive bombing campaign of Laos and Cambodia - also came to light later. It may be stated with some assurance that his actions helped reduce the damage and duration of the War; Ellsburg has since received the Ron Ridenhour Courage Prize,  the Gandhi Peace Award from Promoting Enduring Peace, and the Right Livelihood Award.

Without the full evidence, it's impossible to determine the guilt or innocence of Julian Assange, who was today arrested after his court hearing in the UK. The press seems to have riveted its attention on the allegations of  sexual misconduct - perhaps under pressure from those governments (most notably the US) who have suffered extreme embarrassment with the disclosure of diplomatic cables. While Assange's character may not stand up to that of Ellsburg's, it seems important to remember that Wikileaks is not Julian Assange but is an organization whose actions - while endangering some lives may save many more lives by bringing the actions of governments (and, one hopes, corporations) into the light of day where they can be scrutinized by the public. For that reason I nominated Assange - i.e. Wikileaks - for Time Magazine's Man of the Year Award today.

About the image: This is a heavily-Photoshopped photograph taken in 2007 at the Papal Palace in Avignon - a seat of corruption if ever there was one. I picked it because it suggests a "halls of power" feel, along with the feel of a lurking unknown - i.e. secrets. The white text is a descriptive of Wikileaks most recent document release, while the orange is extracted from an article published today about Assange's arrest.

*Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz estimates the overall cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan War at $3 trillion, taking into account diversion of funds from infrastructure investments, long-term health care cost to the injured, etc. Bush Administration officials insisted that the costs would be more like $50 billion to $60 billion.

¹ The first successful attempt by the federal government to restrain the publication of a major newspaper since the presidency of Abraham Lincoln during the US Civil War [wikipedia]