05 Nov The revolving door piggy trough
And I feel as though I have seen this movie before. I feel the same ring of familiarity. Oh, wait. I do. I do. Because Henry Paulson said the same thing. In an article on CNBC, that was originally published on Tuesday, July 22nd of 2008, we find We’re Gonna Be Alright. In case you don’t know or don’t remember, Henry Paulson is a banker and a financier who was the Secretary of the Treasury from 2006 to 2009. Now, you might also be curious to know that before his role in the Treasury Department, he was the Chairman & CEO of Goldman Sachs. I’ll drop a link to his Wikipedia page, you can check it out for yourself. But this is yet again, in my opinion, another example of the incestuous nature that we see happening between Corporate America and the government. How on earth any rational person couldn’t understand, couldn’t see the strains of crony capitalism happening in this country – and not just in this country, either – I mean, it happens in Europe as well, it’s beyond me. I feel like all of it’s there, you can find it at any point in time, it’s just so many people choose not to.
-“Bonus Episode: ‘Living on the brink'” published on January 16, 2023 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/12031473
Fat cats go from Wall Street to Washington to Corpo America and back again pretty freely. It’s ridiculous to imagine any of them actually “regulate” themselves. And so it is with warfare.
“Cable News Keeps Inviting Defense Industry Shills to Explain the War on Gaza”
–https://jacobin.com/2023/10/cable-news-gaza-war-us-defense-industry-revolving-door
We can’t forget corporate-controlled media in the revolving door. Corpo America ➡️ Capitol Hill ➡️ media outlets ➡️ Wall Street ↩️ and back around again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Treasury man Henry Paulson reassured investors and bank depositors in a speech this morning in New York that the U.S. banking system is okay. Mr. Paulson noted the failure of IndyMac bank, the third largest in history.
But he said it represents only two-tenths of 1 percent of total banking industry assets and that depositors are insured up to $100,000 per account. The FDIC took over the bank two Fridays ago and reopened it the next Monday with business as usual and no one losing a penny of insured deposits.
Mr. Paulson went on to say that of the 8,500 insured banks and thrifts in the U.S., 99 percent are well capitalized. While one thrift and four commercial banks have failed this year, this doesn’t even remotely compare with the 1980s savings-and-loan crisis, where there was an average of 255 failures per year. What’s more, Paulson noted that U.S. financial companies have raised more than $150 billion of new capital.
So I think the Treasury man was basically trying to say that we’re gonna be alright, media pessimism notwithstanding.
–https://www.cnbc.com/2008/07/22/paulson-were-gonna-be-alright.html
Spoiler alert. We were not alright in 2008, media pessimism irrelevant. (It’s worth noting that we’ve seen the same narrative again this time around.)
The episode is part of a broader, recurring pattern in corporate TV news. In recent weeks, MSNBC, NBC, CNN, and Fox News have regularly invited on former defense officials turned industry consultants to explain the conflict between Israel and Palestine without ever mentioning to viewers that these analysts may represent clients with a financial stake in the matters being discussed.
–https://jacobin.com/2023/10/cable-news-gaza-war-us-defense-industry-revolving-door emphasis mine
Defense official ➡️ industry consultant ➡️ media talking head ↩️ back again.
[Jeremy] Bash isn’t the only defense industry consultant being invited on TV to explain the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The networks have also been calling on some of Bash’s colleagues at the Washington, DC–based consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies, where he is a managing director and partner.
While Beacon does not disclose its clients, the firm has worked with Raytheon as well as the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group, according to reports from the New York Times.
On October 12, Fox News interviewed Beacon managing director and partner Michael Allen, who served as a top National Security Council official under President George W. Bush.
-Jacobin, Ibid.
So the MSM is turning to Jeremy Bash, the chief of staff of the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense under Obama, and Michael Allen, who was part of the National Security Council in the W years.
*raises hand slowly in the air* Does it seem like maybe, just maybe, people with ties to the military industrial complex might, like, want warfare to happen?
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