Many of you will be very interested in the financial scandals that led to the 2008 economic collapse, and its social repercussions which include OWS (Occupy Wall Street). I have expanded some comments on this topic, which I posted at the Unrepentant Marxist blog, and present them here. I am posting this because it includes links to 2 video presentations (the first in three parts), which I think you will find interesting. The first 3-part video is of Christopher Hedges speaking to Harvard students, and the second video is Episode 217 of the Keiser Report, a regular commentary on the “Global insurrection against banker occupation, GIABO.”

Both of these video presentations suggest directions OWS can take, or evolve into, in answer to the question of “what next for OWS?”

For those who have not followed the financial news, the Keiser Report discusses: the recent scandal of MF Global, the European financial crisis and secret Franco-German machinations within the Fiscal World War III on the Continent (“Überdebten”), and the explosive revelations of the Bloomberg Freedom-of-Information suit to release Federal Reserve data on its secret multi-trillion-dollar lending (half the US GDP) to the insolvent big banks in 2008. The banks made $13B in profits “processing” these loans from the Federal Reserve (backing up the banks’ toxic worthless subprime “assets”), and which they distributed mostly as bonuses within their ranks. Al Capone only owned a few wards of Chicago, but these Wall Street banks managed to snag half the US GDP. Sustained moral outrage by the public would be a good thing, far more than just OWS; where is it?

Today, I finished reading Tony Judt’s book Ill Fares The Land (Penguin, 2010).

I highly recommend this book to everyone, and especially to anyone participating in the Occupy Movement (particularly the student-age contingent) and/or sympathetic to OWS aspirations. Judt’s book is like a blending of Keiser Report data into a Hedges exhortation to arrive at a seamless exegesis of this moment in history. This book is the moral equivalent in our time to Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” in 1776. Would that it was as widely read and taken to heart.

Christopher Hedges at Harvard on OWS:

Part 1: http://youtu.be/AlR9rMrYuHU
Part 2: http://youtu.be/ugU6ELwbi_o
Part 3: http://youtu.be/SKSUfCG7ax4

or

(for part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlR9rMrYuHU)
(for part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugU6ELwbi_o)
(for part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKSUfCG7ax4)

Thanks to Louis Proyect for posting these video links at: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/chris-hedges-speaks-at-harvard-on-ows/

To complement these Hedges videos, listen to this Keiser Report (below) on the toxic entwining of:

— the Banksters (who are insolvent but want “unlimited” public bailouts with which to give themselves bonuses and build up big hoards of cash so as to keep gambling, instead of spreading capital throughout the economy, stimulating it and creating jobs — the economic purpose of commercial banks),

— the US Congress (which wants to spend more than available revenue), and

— the Federal Reserve (which is interested in enabling both pathologies to the tune of $7.77T — equal to 50% of the US GDP!!! — lent to the banks in secret before Congress created the one-tenth as large relief program, TARP).

The value and failings of OWS are commented on by guest Denninger near the end of this Keiser Report episode.

At the beginning of the program, Keiser and Herbert are discussing the latest financial scandal, of an investment firm (headed by a former New Jersey governor) that stole customer money. Brokers are not supposed to dip into customer accounts to make up their own gambling losses (especially when near $1B). This only works as comedy when done by W. C. Fields, in the Great Depression era film “The Bank Dick.” (The same title for a movie about banks today would convey a different connotation, which Fields probably intended as a double entendre.)

The Keiser Report commentators would like to see OWS take a more specific focus onto financial industry reform, which would require revising attitudes about federal oversight and monetary policy; and we know this economic concern would necessarily have to expand to include progress in reforming campaign financing, a.k.a. the corruption of Congress.

Chris Hedges, like Bill Moyers his elder contemporary, came out of divinity school and passed through journalism, so in their third chapter of life they preach to large secular congregations through the airwaves, and their sermons are based on moral principles. This is not a criticism:

“It is the gap between the inherently ethical nature of public decision-making and the utilitarian quality of contemporary public debate that accounts for the lack of trust felt towards politics and politicians…humans need a language in which to express their moral instincts.” — Tony Judt

The ideal follow-on political movement to OWS would combine the energy of moral outrage with a utilitarian specificity on financial reform (e.g., financial market taxes, banking reform, consumer & student debt relief, much more legal prosecution of fraud related to the 2008 financial collapse), similar to the reform movement represented by the Pecora Commission in 1932-1934. (My initial comments along these lines appeared in the UM blog at: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/the-people-cry-out-against-the-new-great-depression/)

So, from Hedges I see the message to OWS being “get mad as hell.” From Keiser and company I see the message to OWS being “now that you’re good and hot, focus your fire into a laser beam to burn through the stranglehold of bankster fraud.”

See Episode 217 here (mislabeled direct link):
http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/episode-216-max-keiser/

or

E217 at:
http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/

GIABO is Max Keiser’s acronym for the idea of a global financial war between “banks,” or massive finance capital in speculation, and the commons within each sovereign state, also known by various labels: the welfare state, social democracy (Tony Judt), conviviality (Ivan Illich), or the social contract (MG,Jr).

An interesting presentation on the “European Debt Crisis In Eight Graphs” is given in the following article, which includes discussion and analysis:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-european-debt-crisis-in-eight-graphs/2011/12/01/gIQAsmR5GO_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein

From the above article one can see that in Europe the war is between Northern European banks and Southern European (Ireland counts as “southern” because it is Catholic) social democracies. The “banker occupation” of a country is called “austerity.”

World War III is a post-nuclear financial war for control of the commons, globally.