O governo dos EUA mudou radicalmente o caráter do capitalismo norte-americano. Trata-se, nem mais nem menos, de um “golpe de Estado” a favor da classe que Franklin Delano Roosevelt chamava de “bancgsters”. O que aconteceu nas últimas semanas pode alterar o curso do século que começa de maneira irreversível. Estamos diante da maior e mais desigual transferência de riqueza desde que se presentearam terras aos barões das ferrovias na era da Guerra Civil. A análise é de Michael Hudson.

Alguns trechos selecionados:

“Uma classe cleptocrática tomou o controle da economia, a fim de substituir o capitalismo industrial. O termo cunhado um dia por Roosevelt – “bancgsters” – diz tudo em uma palavra. A economia foi assaltada e capturada por uma potência exterior. Não pelos suspeitos habituais: não foi pelo socialismo, não pelos trabalhadores, não pelo “Estado gigante”, não pelos industriais monopolistas, nem sequer pelas grandes famílias de banqueiros”.

“A AIG colheu bilhões de dólares com essas apólices. E graças ao fato de que essas companhias seguradoras são um paraíso “friedmaniano” – não regulado pelo Federal Reserve, nem por nenhuma outra agência de alcance nacional – a subscrição dessas apólices era feita por meio de processos informáticos. A empresa recebia enormes quantidades de honorários e comissões sem sequer aportar capital. Isso é o que se chama de “auto-regulação”. E é assim que, supostamente, funciona a mão invisível do mercado”.

“A analogia que mais se aproxima é a invasão dos Chicago Boy’s, do Banco Mundial e da USAID (Agência dos EUA para o Desenvolvimento Internacional) a Rússia e a outras economias pós-soviéticas logo após a dissolução da URSS, promovendo privatizações de livre mercado a fim de criar cleptocracias nacionais. Para os estadounidenses deveria constituir um sinal de alerta que esses cleptocratas tenham se convertido nas fortunas fundadoras de seus respectivos países. Deveríamos ter presente a observação de Aristóteles, segundo a qual a democracia é o estado imediatamente anterior à oligarquia”.

“Boa parte das culpas deveria recair sobre a Administração Clinton, responsável direta, em 1999, pela supressão da Lei Glass-Steagal, que permitiu aos bancos funcionarem como cassinos. Ou melhor dito, aos cassinos absorverem bancos. Isso é o que pôs em risco a economia dos norte-americanos”.

“Em seu célebre livro “Caminho da Servidão”, Friedrich von Hayek e seus meninos de Chicago insistiam que a servidão viria da planificação e da regulação estatais. Essa visão caminhava na direção contrária a dos reformadores clássicos da Era Progressista, que concebiam a ação do Estado como a do cérebro da sociedade, como a linha diretriz para modelar os mercados e liberá-los dos especuladores rentistas, ou seja, da renda que não fosse contrapartida do desempenho de um papel necessário na produção. (…) a mão invisível terminou resultando em fraude contábil, empréstimo hipotecário podre, informação privilegiada e fracasso em controlar os crescentes gastos da dívida conforme a capacidade dos devedores para pagar. É todo este caos, aparentemente legitimado por alguns modelos de comércio eletrônico, que acaba de ser socorrido pelo Tesouro dos EUA”.

Segue a íntegra da análise de Michael Hudson: Leia o resto do artigo »

By Dr. Michael Hudson

         Present discussions of the mortgage mess are lapsing into an unreal world. Advocates of the $700 bailout are now rounding up a choir of voices to proclaim that the problem is simply a lack of liquidity. This kind of problem, we are told, can be solved “cleanly” (that is, with no Congressional add-ons to protect anyone except the major Bush Administration campaign contributors) by the Federal reserve “pumping credit” into the system by buying securities that have no market when “liquidity dries up.”

         What is wrong with this picture? The reality is that there is much too much liquidity in the system. That is why the yield on U.S. Treasury bills has fallen to just 0.16 percent – just one sixth of one percent! This is what happens when there is a flight to safety. By liquid investors. Many of which are now fleeing abroad, as shown by the dollar’s 3% plunge against the euro yesterday (Monday, Sept. 22).

         The question that the media avoid asking is what people are trying to be safe from? The answer should be obvious to anyone who has been reading about the junk mortgage problem. Investors – especially in Germany, whose banks have been badly burned – are seeking to be safe from fraud and misrepresentation. U.S. banks and firms have lost the trust of large institutional investors here and abroad, because of year after year of misrepresentation as to the quality of the mortgages and other debts they were selling. This is Enron-style accounting with an exclamation point – fraud on an unparalleled scale.

         How many tears should we shed for the victims? The Wall Street firms and banks stuck with junk mortgages are in the position of fences who believed that they had bought bona fide stolen money (“fallen off a truck”) from a bank-robbing gang, only to find that the bills they bought are counterfeit – with their serial numbers registered with the T-men to make spending the loot difficult. Their problem now is how to get this junk off their hands. The answer is to strike a deal with the T-men themselves, who helped them rob the bank in the first place.

         There is a long pedigree for this kind of behavior. And it always seems to involve a partnership between kleptocratic insiders and the Treasury. Today’s twist is that the banksters have lined up complicit accomplices from the accounting industry and bond-rating companies as well. The gang’s all here.

         In view of the mass media these days calling Henry Paulson the most powerful Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton, I think it is relevant to look at two leading acts of Mr. Hamilton that represent remarkable precursors of Mr. Paulson’s present $800 billion “cash for trash” deal with the Bush Administration’s major Wall Street campaign contributors.

         The two most appropriate parallels are the government’s redemption of “continentals” – paper money issued by the colonies during the Revolutionary War – and the Yazoo land grants. During the Revolution, states had issued paper currency to pay the troops and meet other basic expenses. These paper notes had depreciated, hence the term “not worth a continental” (not least because of large-scale counterfeiting by the British to cause economic disruption here). In the crisis, men with hard cash went around buying continentals at a great discount. In one of the most notorious and debated acts of the Constitutional  Convention, the new United States Government redeemed this depreciated paper currency at par.

         It was like the Treasury today buying junk mortgages at face value. But it is in the ensuing Yazoo scandal that we find a perfect combination of financial and real estate fraud on a magnitude that helped establish some of America’s great founding fortunes, creating dynastic wealth that has survived down to the present day.

         The Yazoo land fraud in Bourbon County, Georgia is one of the most notorious incidents of our early Republic. In January 1795 the state sold 35 million acres to four land companies for less than 1½¢ an acre. This was the result of bribery arranged by James Wilson – whom George Washington subsequently rewarded by naming him to the Supreme Court. (Moral: Crime pays.) To add insult to injury, the state was paid in depreciated currency, the “continentals.” So great was the outcry that a new state legislature was elected, and revoked the sale in February 1796, accusing its beneficiaries of “improper influence.”

         But a month before this new legislature was convened, one of the companies (the Georgia Mississippi Land Company) sold over 10 million acres, nominally at 10¢ cents an acre, to the New England Mississippi Land Company, which was quickly organized for just this purpose by some eminent Bostonian speculators, headed by William Wetmore. Only part of the money actually was paid in cash, and the transaction was largely a paper one. The company quickly hired agents to began selling shares to the public. Widespread speculation ensued in many states, each new investor becoming a partisan urging the national and state governments go along with the original fraud.

         New fraudsters jumped on board. Patrick Henry (“Give me liberty, or give me death”) headed up the Virginia Yazoo Company, which made a deal with Virginia Governor Telfair to buy twenty million acres of land at a penny an acre – paid for with the worthless continentals. The public was furious, but the “free marketers” of the day asked, what was wealth, anyway, but a reward for risk-taking. Leia o resto do artigo »