China Needs Trump U.S. Capitalism

Running and Ruining America for the Benefit of China

AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | January 20, 2009
Excerpts below, but complete article linked to Running and Ruining above:

Geithner’s “qualifications” include working for Henry Kissinger, elder statesman of the foreign policy establishment and now an adviser to corporations doing business in China, and serving as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he played a role in the Wall Street and other bailouts. Kissinger recently made headlines on CNBC by proclaiming Obama the architect of a “New World Order” and praising Obama’s appointments in the financial realm. Everybody knew that he was talking about his student, Geithner.

Geithner’s “international respect” comes from Kissinger and other global players in such organizations as the Group of Thirty and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which wield major influence over U.S. economic and foreign policy. Geithner is a member of both groups....

In this context, it is worth noting that corporate members of the CFR include ABC News, General Electric (parent of NBC News), News Corporation (parent of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal), and Time Warner (parent of CNN and Time). Veteran NBC newsman Tom Brokaw serves on the advisory board of the CFR journal Foreign Affairs. Jim Hoagland, an associate editor, chief foreign correspondent and weekly columnist for the Washington Post, is also on the Foreign Affairs advisory board....

Wall Street, which has backed Obama for years, has a vested interest in his success. Billionaire and Obama backer George Soros, convicted of insider trading in France, supports the Group of Thirty and his Soros Fund Management is a member of the exclusive “President’s Circle” of CFR funders. But the success of Obama’s financial and economic policies seems to depend on the cooperation of the Chinese Communists.

In one of the few stories to capture the essence of what is happening with the Geithner appointment, William Pesek of Bloomberg wrote an article appearing in the China Post under the headline, “China Will Be Happy With Geithner.”...

An article in the new Foreign Affairs by Roger Altman, a U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary under Clinton, is quite blunt, noting that the financial crisis has enabled China to “achieve a stronger relative global position” and that the communist regime now has “the opportunity to solidify its strategic advantages.” In other words, we seem to be at their mercy.

From the Obama perspective, the only way out is to go further into debt and beg for more money, mainly from the Chinese but also from the oil-rich Arabs.

Geithner, who speaks Chinese and lived in China, seems to be the perfect man for this job. In fact, he is probably better for the job than Paulson, who traveled to China 70 times and even had personal investments in the country. His former firm, Goldman Sachs, is the exclusive agent for certain Chinese securities transactions.

Whether the U.S. should be subservient to China in Kissinger’s “New World Order” is something that is not even being debated. It is just assumed as a fact of life. The options of reducing spending and debt and rebuilding the strength of the U.S. dollar are rarely considered. Except for some House conservatives, who have introduced the Economic Recovery and Middle-Class Tax Relief Act, the Republican Party in the Congress is either in disarray or rooting for a version of the Obama approach....

AIG is perhaps the most interesting. This insurance giant was bailed out with taxpayer dollars after Paulson let Lehman Brothers go under. Geithner was a key player in the AIG bailout. His former boss, Henry Kissinger, was chairman of AIG’s International Advisory Board. Other members of the board represent Chinese and Arab financial interests.

But there was another reason that AIG had to be saved. The New York Times reported in a controversial September 27, 2008, article by Gretchen Morgenson that AIG’s collapse could have cost Paulson’s old firm, Goldman Sachs, as much as $20 billion.

AIG’s taxpayer bailout has now reached $150 billion. We are supposed to be reassured, however, by the fact that Geithner’s New York Federal Reserve on January 16 named three trustees to oversee the U.S. government’s nearly 80 percent equity stake in the insurer. One of those trustees is Jill Considine, who has been a member of the Group of Thirty as well as the CFR.

With Change like this, Bush looks great. Forgot, he isn't an elite, articulate, Socialist that the media selected.