Executive compensation...will the big rotting CEO corporate fish take a pay hike?

Suddenly in the op ed page of the 'Financial Times of London' there is worry as capital market grind to a screeching halt, about the astronomical compensation CEO's pay themselves. Will they take pay cuts like the Japanese? Or will they renogiate the terms of golden parachutes? Or will they carry on as usual with hardly a care in the world but their own selfish class interests? This question is forever absent from the pages of the world's financial journals or business sections of the international press. Instead we hear about the outrageous demands of workers. As Gore Vidal famously said, 'free enterprise is for the worker, socialism for the rich'. The cancer spread of revolution will usher in more uncertainty, it is obvious to say, but where are the pols with backbones and the popular movements to demands great change and more sharing of the filthy lucre the CEO's have amassed?

South Korea's new president talks the talk, walks the walk

Lee Myung-bek has done what he said that he would during his run for Seoul's Blue House. He wasn't going to give North Korea a free pass. Now he has done away with the Ministry of Unification which he says is too easy and cosy with Kim Jong il's regime, and put dealings with North Korea under the strong arm of the Ministry of Foregin Affairs. Bye Bye Sundshine policy. This should bring a ray of home to Washington's and Seoul's hardliners. The shift in attitude puts off to the Greek kalends the desire to lessen tensions on the broken Korean peninsula, and to shunt Pyongyang to the rank of a foreign country. Which runs against the grain of the ubiquitous Korean desire for eventual re unification of a divided homeland. This raises the question of what is Mr. Lee's attitude to Kaesong, the economic free zone, which his old company Hyundai is footing the bill? What about the 45 accords signed by Roh Moo hyo and Kim Jong il during the second inter Korean summit [October 2007]? Will he with a stroke of pen abrogate them? Swaggering and posturing will not bring Pyongyang to its knees. As a Korean, Mr. Lee should know that North Korea digs in its heels when faced with adversity. And this mini mouse Bush who blew hot and cold learnt at his own peril. What's more Mr. Lee is slightly younger than Chairman Kim Jong il, and his attitude towards an elder brother does not augur well in a traditional cultural sense. So Mr. Lee's bold stroke will in the short run is nothing but a Pyhrric victory.

US banking pregnant with crisis

It ain't just another crisis, nor has the US banking industry turned a corner on the subprime mortgage meltdown. The easy explanations no longer hold. America's big banks are in turmoil. The market feel almost 278 points yesterday [15 January 2007] as CitiGroup announced a us$9bn loss in 4q07 earnings, and a write off of close to us$20bn. And that's only the beginning, folks! Today Bank of America who just picked up the failing mortgage lender Countrywide, announced a cut back in investment banking activities and a further layoff of staff. Markets have tightened, credit is scare. So these titans of America's banking go like scurrying country mice in search of money outside the US. And there they find it for a price in very fat sovereign funds and countries living high on the hog on Petro dollars or Euros. Even the Japanese banks who have lived in the shadow of a zero sum growth economy for the last 15 years, have the wherewithal to become a purveyor of funds for a stake in Merrill Lynch.
Saying this, it is more than interesting to note that neither the IMF nor the World Bank have pointed a school ma'amish finger at the US for living beyond its means. It is even more curious that no economist has thought it necessary to make a parallel between the crising in American banking and the 1998 Asian crisis. The Asians learnt a sad and sorry lesson and the fat purses of theirs is proof positive that have renovated and primed their economies which are humming with energy and vigour and what's more have swelled exchequers or treasuries. Meanwhilst the US falls deeper into recession, as the national debt balloons into the stratosphere of us$trillions, the country's infrastructure is failing, impoverishment of the populations spreads and deepens, and foreign wars have become a way of life.
In the end, the knell has rung on America's unilateralism, and the country is sinking to a bleak future.

Sarkozy, the Middle East, nuclear energy, and Israel

Nicolas Sarkozy does not do things halfway. He is presently visiting Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He is doing this to renew France's traditional ties with the Arab world which go back to the days of Napoleon. One way to look at his thrust into the Middle East is to cynically remark that he is chasing Petro dollars or Euros for France's industries. But that is obvious and to be expected. On the other hand, he is offering France's know how in building nuclear plants for the peaceful use of atomic energy. Who says peaceful use might leap to the conclusion that such knowledge will lead to the military use of the atomic. Which should give Israel much cotton to thread, since it is the only nuclear military power in the region which it denies. And it has twice bombed its neighbours ventures into nuclear energy--first in Iraq in 1982 and in 2007 in Syria whom it suspected without a shard of truth of building a nuclear plant for military purposes.
18Brumaire can play the devil's advocate in saying that it was the French Socialist Guy Mollet who first gave Israel the abc's of making nuclear weapons at the time of the pre emptive strike by Israel, France, and the United Kingdom against Nasser's Egypt for his daring to daring to nationalise the Suez Canal. France took Israel's side for she saw Nasser's hand in the raging war in Algeria the origins of which were homegrown and the result of Paris' colonial policies there. So in an ironic turn, Sarkozy is righting a political wrong by offering Qatar and the UAE means to use atomic energy for peaceful use. Saying this, it should strike terror in the hearts of the Israeli who act with impunity in the region to scare its neighbours and crow like the cock of the walk. But already the knell is tolling for Tel Aviv.
And such is the thrust of Nicolas Sarkozy's walk among the gulf states.

Another word on recession

Sunday's New York Times [13 January 2007] had a headline that America's economists thought that it was too late to do anything but let the recession that the country has fallen into, ride out the cycle. This from a nation whose economists win Nobel prizes in economics! Now CitiGroup is going to write off more billions in bad loans, as is Merrill Lynch, and soon many others. They look not to Washington for help but to Arab emirates awash in Petro dollars and very fat sovereign funds, as they do to Asia for bail out. Credit has so shrunk that these desperate men will sell what little black souls that they have, to save themselves, their class, their comfort, and their privileges. In doing so, they are selling their place in the economic sun for a mess of potage like Easu did his birthright in the bible.
Which ever you slice the story, the US establishment is guilty of betraying the American people for the interest of a few, for the rich, the dumb, the famous, and the incompetent. So now we're hearing the wailing and gnashing of teeth of those who a year ago would think nothing of stepping hard on the poor and the outcast to firm up their vapid, vicious, vacuous class rule of capital! May they all burn in hell!

The British plot to overthrow Italy's elected government had the Communist won in the 1970's

An Italian researcher discovered among recently declassified papers in London that in the 1970's the British government actively sought to stage a putsch in Italy had the Italian Communist Party, that country's second largest party, won the elections. They did, and so the plans were scrapped.
For readers with a longer memory or a finer sense of history, in Europe, and certainly in Italy, it was widely feared that the CIA, MI6, and members of the Italian right-wing, including the resurrected Fascist party, were plotting to overthrow the elected government, even were it the corrupt Christian Democratic led team in office. It also was a time when the Red Brigade flourished fighting a dirty war against the establishment, partly fearing the return of a Mussolini styled fascist rule. It was a time that the Italian cineaste Pasolini made his cinematographic, difficult masterpiece, 'Salo or the 100 days of Salo'. [Salo was the fascist republic that the Germans set up in northern Italy after Mussolini fled when the Americans were fighting up the Italian peninsula. And for 100 days, this phantom fascist joke reigned till the Nazis were defeated. Mussolini and his mistress were killed and then hung up on lamp posts.] It was the time Aldo Moro was kidnapped but the government refused to rescue him, and as a result his body was found in a boot of an automobile. Overriding this confusion and spectre of a putsch from the right, the sad events of Italy in the 1970's played out. What was so fearful about the CPI, a party whose great man Palmiro Togliatti [whose great admirer was the aristocratic Luchino Visconti] made the historic compromise with the bourgeois party, and had toned down the message of war and revolution. That made no difference to the CIA, MI, nor the Italian right wing diehards, for them Italy had become the epicentre of the cold war and the battlefield to thwart Moscow's aim. They misread history, but the CPI did not win at the polls, so the plan was scrapped. A footnote, the British consulted that paragon of virtue and democracy Henry Kissinger on the matter. What a logical choice! He has engineered a coup against the democratically elected mild Socialist government of Allende, bringing thereby to power another paragon of virtue Pinochet whose long rule left a wake of bodies and ill fortune to Chile.

Bush on democracy, terror, and Iran

Arguably [sic] George Bush is the worst president America has had. Cocksure of himself, he is the last person to lecture on history and democracy. His ego knows no bounds, so it is not surprising that in Abu Dhabi he delivered his scold on democracy, terror, and Iran to a gathering of Abu Dhabi elite who listened to him in polite, cold silence. Bush's idea of democracy is 'one dollar, one vote', which means he favours his class, and more surely the Arab sheikdoms awash with oil and petro dollars that he has been wooing. The complexities of democracy are such that he is willing to wage wars, bolster up despotic Arab regimes, and any tin horn dictator who seeks Washington's protection. But 18Brumaire is saying the obvious, and what is more obvious that the purveyors of terrorism live in Bush's White House or are found say in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Bush harps without skipping a beat on the bombing of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, yet he stubbornly refuses to point the finger of blame at Saudi Arabia the cradle of Islamic terrorism, the bag lady of funds for the spread of radical Islam throughout the Muslim and non Muslim world. For of the 18 hijackers two thirds were Saudi, and of course the brain behind it all Osama ben Laden is of Yemenite Saudi origin. This would be expecting too much from mini mouse Bush whose family have incestuous ties with the Saudi royal house. It is bruited that through the 'good offices' of Saudi royals, on Bush's promise to withdraw US troops from Saudi soil, the home of Islam's sacred Mecca, ben Laden agreed that never again would he plot to bomb anywhere on American soil. Bush kept his promise as did ben Laden, mortal enemies though they are. What's more Bush when questionned as to why the Americans dropped the ball in capturing ben Laden, waved off the question with a 'it is of little importance'. Tell that the American people dolthead Bush! Iran may have many faults but they didn't blow up the WTO. Thanks to Bush's ill conceived and false war in Iraq, he personally is responsible for upsetting the applecart in the region, and catapulted Teheran into the catbird's seat of balance of power in the Middle East. So much for his arrogance and blinded stupidity. The world will breathe easier when he leaves office, and that's the truth!

Citibank goes a begging

A note on the selling of Citibank's soul to China and Kuwait and other foreign private investors. The subprime mortgage meltdown has down the proud Citibank in. It has to go begging far and wide, to absorb the seimic shock of writing off billions in bad loans. And this is just the beginning, for a conservate estimate for the investment banking industry puts the tab around half a trillion US dollars. A wag who reads back issues of the Wall Street Journal will find this cynical comment made by a banker during the 1980's Latin American debt crisis which forced American banks to writhe in pain. `We bankers are for the free market when we can make a buck, and we believe in the state when we are losing a buck!' So much for the capitalism that the toilet bowl cleaner Alan Greenspan believes in! Greed is the spreading cancer eating up the US' prime place in the market.

The Writers' Strike & Upton Sinclair

What has Upton Sinclair to do with the Writers' strike. A lot. The strike is going into its 65 day. It is a strike and has given a shot in the arm to an anemic trade union movement in the US, a movement much weakened by outsourcing of manufacturing and of critical jobs outside the country. The big 6 -- Song, Viacom, CBS, Disney, General Electric, and TimeWarner--are playing hardball to deny intellectual workers in television and Hollywood the just fruits of work of theirs as the industry expands on to the internet, say. So when we strip everything down to its bare bones, we have a classical setting of the big rich bosses against the workers. Now here's where Upton Sinclair comes in. The very much touted and dull film 'There will be blood', loosely based on Sinclair's 'Oil' is a pastiche of the real meat of the long forgotten novel. It has at its core a confrontation of a rapacious oil baron and a strike among oil workers. It is crushed brutally, but Hollywood has eviscerated the body of the story with an ugly portrait of an oil man played by Daniel Day Lewis who crushes an evangelical preacher with a passion for money and his own self promotion.
The Writers' strike won't be crushed in this instant, but the big 6 are doing everything to weaken further a labour union. They're willing to loose hundreds of millions to hold the upper hand. And so the Golden Globe awards are now a press conference, and let's hope the concrete long hours of the Oscars will go down in the dust. For very few actors will cross the picket line, and the big 6 are willing to walk away with a small blip on the very black bottom line of theirs. Little wonder no one in the years following the stunted reign of saint Ronald Reagan thinks much of labour unions or the need to combine the strength of the many into a fist to punch the greedy owners in the nose for a just and equitable standard of living, in an age of rampant individualism and outright greed. Let everyone see 'Let the cradle rock' about workers ... let's see more about the working man. On the radio and television we get the bosses propaganda on business and the like. No one talks of labour and the worker. It's about time. And though many may not think that a strikers win, let them look at the writers!

Mao was right?

The growing yaw of wealth in 'Communist' China and the flocking of peasants from the interior to the coastal and large provincial cities, are the cause of concern in a roaring Chinese economy. Since Deng Xiao Ping's turn to the capitalist road--it's alright to be rich--development is occuring along patterns established when China was cut up by foreign powers during its shame. Mao had the idea which turned into a nightmare when he launched the great proletarian cultural revolution in the 1960's, to keep the peasants on the land and bring industry and the world to the countryside. [Remember it was his investigation into conditions in the countryside which brought him to leadership of the Communist party of China, and his call for the union of the workers and peasants which firmed up his iron fisted rule!]Now it seems the minions of foreign private companies like JNJ and Avon and the like are going back to the countryside in a way that recalls Alice Tisdale's 1930's best seller 'Lamps for the oil of China' or even earlier the purveyors of growing tobacco through the 'generosity' of British American Tobacco earlier in the 20 century. The clean shaven rulers in Beijing are now pushing for a return to the countryside but alas without much vigour. And there lies the rub and the grounds for the party's ultime demise.