November 15, 2009 |
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Women’s rights are
human rights?
Stephen Henry Lewis,
United Nations’ envoy for HIV AIDS in Africa, 2006, said:
“[Women’s rights have] never been made real, and so long as men control the levers and bastions of power… it never will be real. The demeaning diminution of women is everywhere evident… where freedom from sexual violence, the right to sexual autonomy, to sexual and reproductive health, social and economic independence, and even the whiff of gender equality are barely approximated. It’s a ghastly, deadly business, this untrammeled oppression of women in so many countries on the planet.”
(1) The fundamentals of Ayn Rand’s philosophy are put forth in three nonfiction books, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, The Virtue of Selfishness, and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
(2) The Profile in Courage Award is a private award given to recognize displays of courage similar to those John F. Kennedy described in his book Profiles in Courage. It is given to individuals (often elected officials) who, by acting in accord with their conscience, risked their careers or lives by pursuing a larger vision of the national, state or local interest in opposition to popular opinion or pressure from constituents or other local interests. Refer Wikipedia.
(3) The winner [of the Profile in Courage Award] is presented with a sterling silver lantern made by Tiffany’s…The lantern is patterned after the lanterns on USS Constitution, the last sail-powered ship to remain part of the US Navy, which is permanently moored nearby [the JFK Library]. Refer Wikipedia.
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Greed Spans Generations
The 1929 financial crash occurred while Republicans dominated the government. That year will live in infamy as surely as 2008 when Republicans, again in power, watched Wall Street come a-tumbling down. While it is still fresh in our memories, and because millions of Americans have been wiped out of their homes, jobs, businesses, retirements, health, and dreams, let us be absolutely sure this crash could have been avoided. The elephant dung in the room? A steaming pile of greedy men conspiring to get rich at any cost to others.
Born a Winner
One lone woman in a relatively obscure government office trumpeted a warning that undoubtedly would have saved trillions of dollars and perhaps the global economy if her male colleagues had refrained from trampling her for the sake of the good old boys’ $ sign.
Brooksley Born’s impeccable background included graduating at the top of her class at Stanford Law School, and later being named president of the Stanford Law Review. She subsequently rose to partnership in the prestigious Washington-based international law firm of Arnold & Porter. “Her early career focused on international trade law, in which she represented a number of Swiss industries and the government of Switzerland…Among her other high-profile cases was the matter of the Hunt Brothers attempt to corner the silver market in the 1970s. She eventually rose to be the head of Arnold & Porter’s derivatives practice.” Refer Wikipedia
On April 15, 1994, Ms. Born was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency which oversees the futures and commodity options markets. Two years later, she became its chair, and recognized the need to regulate derivatives, specifically swaps that are traded at no central exchange, known as the dark market, and thus have no transparency except to the two counter-parties. AKA Over-the-Counter Derivatives, these ‘instruments’ are little more than Monopoly money hedging the gambles against risky investments, thereby affording plenty of room for fraud. Government personnel knew so little about such derivatives as Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and Long Term Capital Management (LTCM hedge funds), they christened them “a black box of swaps.”
Upon her chairpersonship, Born’s team completed a complicated financial analysis which led them to anticipate a serious financial crisis. The CFTC presented its findings in a “Concept Release” report to members of Clinton’s ‘President’s Working Group,’ specifically Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, and Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Arthur Levitt later joined the group.
It should be no surprise that these men opposed government regulation and interference in monetary matters, especially the kind with no record keeping requirements, no reporting regulations, and which allowed banks to operate their “wet dream” in full secrecy while peddling trillions of dollars in Over-the-Counter Derivatives to such industry giants as Proctor & Gamble, who lost millions at the hands of Bankers Trust. Albeit Greenspan and his powerful cohorts proceeded to stifle Born’s attempt to shed light on the dark market, she ignored their strong-arm tactics in an effort to protect the interest of the investors about to be screwed and released the report to Congress anyway.
Gender Turf Wars
Thanks to Greenspan, Rubin, Summers, and Levitt, Congress had a heyday teaching Born a lesson in group dynamics. Born was caught in the crossfire of “an amazing number of bullets.” The President’s Working Group and Congress denounced her integrity, her intelligence, her job, and her gender by labeling her irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable, and boring. Her dire warning went unheeded, and her agency CFTC was promptly disempowered by Congress. In frustration and powerlessness, Born resigned her position thereby sacrificing her political career.
Then, in 2000, along came George W. Bush, the puppet president of the financial elite. He was anything but an intellectual genius and certainly lacked financial expertise in his previous careers of oil tycoon and sports team owner. (He did, however, manage to erect the only U.S. oil rig in the Persian Gulf,…known as Arbusto, Spanish for ‘Little Bush.’)
I’m wondering if the September 11, 2001 attack on The World Trade Centers had anything to do with covering up the crumbling currencies of foreign countries caused in part by an estimated $595 trillion in worthless OTC Derivatives that made the hawkers wealthy beyond imagination. Add to the smoke screen a little Pentagon blast that would lead to and justify the re-energizing of the U.S. economy through its military-industrial complex staging a couple of trillion-dollar wars on foreign soil.
“Other than the war in Iraq [and Afghanistan], the Katrina disaster, the deficit, the CIA leak, torture, stopping stem cell research, homeland security, global warming and undercutting science, we’ve yet to really feel the negative effects of the Bush administration.” ~ Bill Maher, political satirist, author, documentarian.
Wizard of Odds
We can also thank former Republican president Ronald Reagan for his all-out campaign against financial regulation by government. Guru of the times was Ayn Rand, a proponent of free market capitalism and author of several books (1) including Atlas Shrugged, (pub. 1957). Reagan’s appointment of Alan Greenspan (also a fan of Rand) in 1987 paved the way to the yellow gold-brick road for the favored Wizard of Odds.
After 18 years of Federal Reserve Bank control, Greenspan retired in 2006, well before the foundations of Wall Street’s castles began to collapse, wiping out global treasuries one by one. Before he left his post, he apologized before Congress, admitting he was wrong about markets regulating themselves effectively. To my knowledge, he didn’t offer to return any of the millions he surely pocketed along the way.
In 2008 the shit really hit the fan, as they say, and the murky financial mess was left behind for the victims of massive OTC Derivatives fraud to clean up. Recovery will be lengthy and brutally painful for all but the wealthy elitists. At least the Republicans have someone to blame—new kid on the [chopping] block, Barack Obama.
“In 2009, Brooksley Born received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award (2) in recognition of the political courage she demonstrated in sounding early warnings about conditions that contributed to the current global financial crisis. According to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, “…Brooksley Born recognized that the financial security of all Americans was being put at risk by the greed, negligence and opposition of powerful and well-connected interests….” Refer Wikipedia.
The guys got yachts, mansions, gold, and prestige. Ironically Born’s award was in the form of a sterling silver lantern (3) made by Tiffany’s. If we’re able to learn anything from this saga, perhaps it is to be thankful for inclusive, compassionate, integrous, courageous, and wise women striving to represent the people—the proletariat—and not the promissory profiteers.
For more on this story, watch Frontline TV public affairs program, October 20, 2009 The Warning (approx. 55 minutes)
#0064 Albeit Rantler
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