Who's More Corrupt?

Did you know that the "oil spill" in Arkansas over the weekend was actually tar sands (the stuff to be piped through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline)? Tar sands are probably exempt from the taxes that fund the clean up of such spills, yet this sludge is more toxic and more difficult to clean up than conventional crude.

Some interesting facts: the first, for me, was Oil Change's report, identifying the spill with Canadian tar sands. It wasn't reported that way in the New York Times, which used the euphemism "heavy crude from western Canada," nor on NPR, which simply reported it as a major oil spill until the following day.

Tar sands aren't oil. After much processing (requiring much heat, polluting more than coal), this "bitumen" sludge can be converted into an oil feedstock for further refining, but to call it "heavy crude" conceals what it really is and why a spill is much worse than conventional oil.

Toxicity is one of the reasons for blocking the XL Pipeline, which may be why even supposedly "objective" media outlets misled. Tar sands money has corrupted Canada's politics, and is adding to the endemic, legal corruption here. It may inspire right-wing billionaires, like the Kochs, to purchase media outlets like the LA Times.

Look at the contrast between India and the US: here the courts are influenced by major corporations, especially after Citizens United, and demand outrageous privileges, like patent monopolies indefinitely extended.

India is famous for its petty and not so petty corruption, personally observed when I lived there 33 years ago. Contemporary accounts imply it's as bad now. However, in some ways it might be less corrupt than the US, where corporations get anything they want, like Novartis' minor tweaking of an AIDS drug allowing indefinite monopoly protection. An Indian judge did something our Congress and courts have rarely managed: he stood up to Big Pharma, striking down Novartis' claim that its minor modification justified a new patent (monopoly protection) for the 20 years the Indian patent law permits.

In the US, regulators, courts and Congress bend over backwards to give corporations what they want--like the covert insertion of the "Monsanto protection act" into the Food bill.

The US may have fewer officials and politicians with their hands out, but the powerful use legal corruption. Their bribes are more lucrative: campaign funds, insider info, high paying jobs, and promotions when they recycle back from private to public sectors.

They are in service to our ultimate Roman Senators--the Koch brothers, Murdoch or Lockheed Martin--who know that control of the media is key.

Outside the US, people get freer news: in the US, Congress is writing a law to more strictly control the Internet, our best remaining source for a free flow of information.

Are we already a corporate state, a plutocracy like the later Roman Empire? Hard to tell with the managed information we're fed.

JP Morgan Chase F..ked Up

Jamie Dimon must be furious! His minions f..ked up. His argument for weakening the Volcker Rule and other regulations just got quashed by the "sloppiness" of his own trading unit.

Maybe Bank of America is too big to be humbled by such a monumental loss, but this was just one trading strategy, supposedly to "hedge" risk of another trading strategy.

Why shouldn't banks be allowed to make bets with their own money? This's why. It's why Glass-Steagall, or something very similar needs to be re-enacted: banks should not be allowed to gamble; only trading companies, without individual depositors should be allowed to gamble like this--and allowed to fail.

Why would that make a difference? BOA wouldn't be so big if it didn't have millions upon millions of depositors, insured by FDIC. If BOA were to fail, because of further "sloppy" gambles, the whole financial system would again be in danger of implosion, a revisit to the disaster of 2008, but probably worse, since BOA is much, much larger than Bear Stearns, etc.

Why shouldn't the federal government regulate these combination banking and trading institutions? Why shouldn't it regulate to minimize risk of another collapse? Is it really good policy to allow these hybrid institutions to maximize risk for the whole economy?

The very fact that this is still a question, says a lot about our political economy. We have only recently climbed a little way out of the hole caused by this kind of financial speculation, yet the power of money is such, that someone like BOA CEO Jamie Dimon, strongly connected to that aforementioned collapse, still has the credibility to argue against increased regulation--and to be listened to, until his own institution proves him dramatically wrong.

The game our elites are playing is dangerous. Banks gamble with money; oil and gas companies gamble with our climate and our water. Isn't that what exploitation of Canadian tar sands, gas and oil fracking in the Northeast US and oil exploration in newly melting Arctic Ocean waters all represent?

They gamble with our future, not just financially and environmentally, but the future viability of US power. If the oil and gas companies have their way, not only will the seas rise by over 50 feet, according to James Hanson, but the US will be stuck in a dinosaur economy, when the rest of the world is racing to create alternative energy.

Maybe that's comparable to Rome's inability to adjust to the new cavalry-driven warfare practiced by Huns and Germanic tribes. For about two generations, the Romans were able to buy them off, buying their services--until they were driven into bankruptcy.

"Patriots," our drive to pump--and burn--even more hydrocarbons--and billions of dollars, will not only destroy the climate, it will bankrupt the Empire! We'll need an even larger military to protect our dependence on imported oil.