THE PRICE OF GREED

The worldwide banking crisis documents the fraud on the nations
of the greed-for-money treadmill

By Karl Mueller

[This article published September 2007 in: Zeit-Fragen is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.zeit-fragen.de.]

Much has been written in the last weeks about the causes, course and effects of the US real estate market- and banking crises. Illuminating the roots and context of the crises is important.

A real estate- and mortgage boom was intentionally produced in the US to artificially keep alive the deadbeat US war economy after the dramatic price drops in 2000 and hold the population in dependence. Who would really think independently and who would protest resolutely against the war when absorbed in buying the little house and then profitably selling this house – thanks to the policy of his own government – while his head is in the sling of creditors and their interest policy?

The intelligence was paralyzed; the crazy id3ea of fast risk-free profits befuddles minds. Around 2 million mortgage debtors in the US face the forced repossession of their homes.

The temporary profits of “home building” were only the breadcrumbs in the gigantic business of banks and other financial institutes which with billions of dollars expansively entered the real estate- and mortgage business. From the first, everyone with intelligence knew all this really would not work. The ground was never solid. The illusion that no one would see the nakedness of the emperor “with his new clothes” fueled the motor of the greed-for-money business.

This branch works single-mindedly against solidarity since every speculator believes he will profit most from uncertainties. What plunges one into ruin can be a giant profit for another. But only the others fall into destruction! That is the true face of predator capitalism!

Several banks bought credit market papers in the round dance of massive greed-for-money from which they expected profits of 20 percent and more and which they would not sell again. To the others, the “Financial Times of Germany” from August 22 recommends “distressed investments,” in other words buying credit market papers from “customers in distress.” This will certainly be one of the most lucrative strategies of the next years. The German financial capital paper uses the correct term “financial crematorium.”

More than 20 years ago the US economist Hyman Minsky predicted what is now occurring and what the German periodical Stern described as follows: “Carelessly accumulated risks on the mortgage market have inevitably led to a collapse that expands to all areas of the financial world. Home-builders lose their homes, investors thousands of billions and banks fall into insolvency.”

Remember, the worldwide economic crisis of the 1920s and 1930s also had its “profiteers,” powerful financiers in London and New York who prevented reasonable counter-measures against the crisis and instead planned Hitler’s dictatorship and the Second World War.

European, German and American financial institutes craved a piece of the US real estate- and mortgage cake and infused a massive amount of money in the illusion of the big business. The crash in the US has also seized them – whether with the Saxony regional bank or the IKB regional bank. These banks were intent on competent examination of the solidity of customers as credit recipients without regard to the private and less transparent international rating agencies. Who else will be seized cannot be predicted. The Saxony regional bank was taken over by the Baden-Wurtemberg regional bank. Previously 17 billion euro had to be injected by the German savings bank financial group as a rescuing action. Additional entanglements are reported almost daily. Spiegel Online named the Bavarian regional bank on September 13. This bank is also involved in the US mortgage market with 1.8 billion euro. The megalomania in Bavaria’s regional bank is unbroken. The Westphalia regional bank ruined by speculations may be purchased. Government representatives sit on the advisory or administrative boards of all the regional banks. On September 5, the “Berliner Zeitung” newspaper reported that Deutsche Bank itself which called attention a few weeks ago to the precarious situation of the IKB bank transacted risk credits for years and earned $20-30 million. In other words, Deutsche Bank earned vast sums in the greed-for-money business. When the business first became too torrid, it shouted “Catch the thief!” Three years before, experts had pointed to the trifling solidity of the IKB borrowers on the US mortgage market. But the business at that time ran very well for the participants.

The fact that this private banking world no longer can or will grant credit to each other or pull itself from the swamp shows the magnitude of mutual mistrust and the disaster of the banking world, particularly the US banking world. This banking world obviously has nothing solid to offer any more. In an extraordinary act, the European Central bank leaped into the breach in the first half of August with more than 200 billion euro of European assets as “liquidity assistance.” This 200 billion euro is now lacking for other projects. Remember, this sum is more than four times the annual worldwide spending for development assistance. Only the money press is working. As Gottfried Heller, manager of one of the oldest independent assets administrators in Germany formulated in an August 29 interview, are the hundreds of billions of newly printed euro, dollars and yens all over the world making all our money increasingly worthless? For people like French president Sarkozy, these are all only “market corrections.” In an August 15 letter to German chancellor Merkel, he spoke of certain lessons from the crisis but immediately added “these movements on the market would not touch the robust long-term growth of our economies.” Is this growth with the war economy as under Hitler? How long will we still allow this?

How long will more and more newly printed money be stuffed in the greed-for-money treadmill so a few with money robbed from the people will make even more money? How long will the wealth of the people not benefit the people themselves through investments in productive and public interest areas, jobs, profitable production of goods needed by all people, schools and hospitals? How long will ever more brutal and anti-human wars be waged for the greed-for-money treadmill on the backs of our generation and coming generations devouring all our money and threatening our health and life? How long will more and more “crises” be intentionally produced that take our breath away and eliminate our free thinking? How long will more and more state “measures” be taken against all who protest or could protest?