The Jig is Up
by Lynn Henderson quote:The present financial crisis is more fundamental and more sweeping than the 1929 crash and depression. It is the end of an era. The end of the so-called American Century. The demise of the world financial system which American capitalism set up at the famous Bretton Woods conference in 1944 following WWII. And there is no agreement on what will or can replace it.

For some 50 years now the American working class, or the media's preferred euphemism, the American middle class, has been the target of an intense class war in which real wages and income have been relentless reduced. This has been a one-sided class war with little effective resistance, especially from a hopelessly bureaucratized and conservatized trade union movement, which, in addition, has slavishly tied itself to one of the principle instruments of this class war, the Democratic political party. Everyone recognizes some of the more obvious results of this one-sided class war. An ever increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of a thin layer at the top -- CEO salaries that have gone from 40 times that of the average employee to 300 times.

But there is an obvious contradiction here. Economists calculate that approximately 80 percent of the economy is driven by consumer spending. If real wages have been falling over the last 50 years, how has the economy, at least until recently, continued to expand and profits continue to grow? This was accomplished by a number of strategies designed to offset the effect of falling real wages on consumer spending.

The first of these was the simple expedient of drastically increasing the total number of hours worked. Overtime was increased, leisure time was decreased. The single wage earner family was largely eliminated. No longer did one partner work while the other, usually the female, took on the demanding job of running the home and caring for the children. The "Leave It To Beaver" family of the 1950's disappeared from American society.

When this proved insufficient, family members were forced into a second and even a third part time job. Grandpa and grandma were moved into the basement apartment, and shuffled off to Walmart earning extra bucks as greeters to supplement their Social Security check….

The next move was a massive expansion of consumer debt. The credit card industry was born. It was not so long ago that credit cards were mostly limited to business executives who did a lot of traveling. New federal legislation was put in place ending the ability of individual states to regulate credit cards and eliminating all usury laws which capped the maximum interest that could be charged. The nation was flooded with credit cards carrying 20 percent plus interest rates, a return previously only available to Mafia loan operations. The average American family now holds seven of these cards. The banks issuing these cards made record profits and consumer debt soared to record levels. But it did mask the effects of falling real wages and produced a significant if temporary boost in consumer spending.

Paralleling the encouragement of ever more consumer debt was an even more risky policy, the massive and continuous expansion of government debt. We will address this crucial question in greater detail shortly but for now we can note that these record deficit budgets of necessity fueled inflationary pressures. One way these inflationary pressures expressed themselves was an artificial rise in the dollar value of houses -- the so-called housing boom. For most middle class/working class families, their home, if they own one, is by far their biggest financial asset. As credit cards maxed out and the size of consumer credit card debt became unsupportable, another particularly dangerous financial gimmick was floated. Consumers were encouraged, and driven by necessity, to take cash equity out of their inflated house value. Second mortgages, third mortgages, home equity loans, became the final desperate hope for keeping their heads above water -- for meeting expenses and paying down credit card debt that was killing them with 20% plus interest rates. New home buyers were lured into predatory sub-prime and adjustable rate mortgages with the assurance that housing prices would continue to raise indefinitely, allowing them to refinance and even cash out increased equity in the foreseeable future. And again it propped up consumer spending.

The banks made big bucks out of the credit card ploy but it was peanuts in comparison to what they were able to accomplish with the new mortgage schemes…. When the housing bubble burst, it triggered not just a crisis in the mortgage market but the collapse of a financial house of cards that had been building for decades.

Even more significantly, it exposed fatal flaws in the entire world financial system which had been in place for seventy years, ever since the famous Bretton Woods conference of 1944. When the United States organized the Bretton Woods conference, the US was the largest creditor nation in the world; for all intents and purposes it was the only creditor nation in the world. Today it is the largest debtor nation in the world.

For decades the United States has run ever larger deficit budgets fueling an ever larger national debt….

The United States was able to pursue such a policy over an extended period of many decades because of the unique, privileged position of the dollar in the world economic system….

Prior to WWII, international trade and the settlement of international trade balances were accomplished primarily through the shifting of gold accounts. But by the end of WWII the United States ended up with all the gold, or most of it. A new basis for organizing international trade had to be found and found quickly. At the 1944 Bretton Woods conference it was agreed that the dollar would replace gold in its international trade function. That the dollar would be accepted as good as gold. That the dollar would become the reserve currency for the entire capitalist world. This is how the U.S. dollar acquired its unique, privileged position. Or to use a term union members can appreciate it, acquired "super seniority". This arrangement made certain sense for the world capitalist economy, but only so long as the U.S. economy remained a strong, dominant, expanding economy with a strong financial balance sheet.

What do the continuous deficit budgets and the exploding federal government debt mean? It means this debt has to be funded; the government has to borrow money. It does this by selling U.S. treasury bonds which are government I.O.U.s. Today most of these U.S. treasuries are sold in the international market and held by such countries as Japan, the Middle East oil nations and especially China.

The United States has become utterly dependent on continued international purchases of these treasuries and the regular roll-over of those already held.…

As the crisis unfolded, and the government bailout and infusion of funds began to take place, Treasury Secretary Paulson suddenly and out-of-the-blue made a truly astounding demand that Congress immediately authorize 700 billion dollars to be dispensed by him, as he saw fit, with no congressional or judicial oversight.

Despite some claims to the contrary, he essentially got everything he demanded. What provoked such a move? David Rothkopf, an apparently well connected scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, lets the cat out of the bag in a major article entitled 9/11 Was Big. This is Bigger. In the October 12 Washington Post he writes; "Reports from within the Treasury suggested that the U.S. government intervened in the financial sector, at least in part, in response to Chinese threats to reconsider their policy of buying U.S. debts unless Washington moved to stabilize the markets."

This signals the end for the U.S. dollar's status as world reserve currency -- the end of "super seniority" for the dollar. And national leaders throughout the world know it. They are demanding a new worldwide economic conference to deal with the crisis….

It's all well and good to demand a new Bretton Woods but it ignores the fact that the utterly unique historical conditions allowing for the successful Bretton Woods conference of 1944 no longer exist nor are they reproducible. There was little in the way of negotiations between equals or even serious two way discussion at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. A completely dominant and victorious U.S. capitalism dictated, and the rest of the capitalist world acceded. The usual laws of capitalist international competition were uniquely and temporarily in suspension.

That is certainly not the case in the world today. The European nations calling for a world conference can't even come up with a cooperative, coordinated response to the crisis among themselves….

"This is unprecedented, " said Simon Tilford, chief economist for the Center for European Reform. "It has exposed the limits of European integration and coordination when presented with a crisis of this magnitude."

It's not unprecedented. It is merely confirmation of the basic law of capitalist competition, between firms and between capitalist nation states. In times of acute crisis, the law's application becomes particularly brutal, it becomes: "Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost."

What does this all mean for the American middleclass/ working class? The enormous costs of the Wall Street and banking sector bailouts are unprecedented, with much more to come, including corporate bailouts.

Someone will have to pay, and without the aid of a dollar with "super seniority". How the pace of events plays out is hard to predict but we will certainly see a dramatic intensification of class warfare against the American middleclass/ working class. But it can no longer be a one-sided class war; they will have to resist; they will have no choice. They will not be able to just bare their breasts and accept the incoming rounds.

They are not in an advantageous position to fight this war. The trade union movement will be of little help as it is presently constituted, and it will take time and a tough fight to change it. Unlike most of the major industrial nations America, has no socialist or labor party which in the heat of battle could be transformed into a fighting political instrument. Such a party would have to be built from scratch and in the face of deep existing illusions about the progressive nature of the Democratic Party. But the American capitalist elite are not in good shape either. The crisis has shaken them; there is a growing sense of panic and demoralization.

No one looks forward to this war. But the war will come. For everyone "The Jig is Up."

[ 08 November 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]