Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street while Rescuing Wall Street, Neil Barofsky, 2012, 270 pages, Dewey 338.97302, ISBN 9781451684933
The authoBailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street while Rescuing Wall Street, Neil Barofsky, 2012, 270 pages, Dewey 338.97302, ISBN 9781451684933
The author was the special inspector general for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the 2008 Wall Street bailout.
2019 update: the $700 billion Wall Street bailout ended up costing $16 trillion. --/Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic/, Christopher W. Shaw, 2019: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Top financial-institution executives know that the U.S. Government will bail them out if their bets lose. Wall Street has captured control of the U.S. Government. p. 19. [Obama had to kiss Wall Street's ring to get the campaign money to win the presidency, as Charles Gasparino details in /Bought and Paid For/: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... .] Obama filled his administration with bankers and let them give hundreds of billions of dollars to their firms to recover their losses from their fraudulent transactions. Same as George W. Bush's team did. pp. 90-95. Every secretary of the Treasury has a callous indifference to the public interest and a slavish bias toward Wall Street. As does the president who appointed him. p. 149.
PERVERSE INCENTIVE
Subprime loans earned the lender higher interest and fees than prime loans. The less chance the borrower had of repaying, the more the lender received. No one on Wall Street--rating agencies, accountants, banks, lawyers, brokers, notaries, appraisers, …--cared to look at fraud, as long as they were getting fat fees. pp. 13-16, 84-95.
WANT TO BET?
The big banks created, marketed, and sold (purportedly AAA but in fact junk) bonds they expected to plummet in value as the real estate market soured; the banks placed large bets that their bonds would tank; the banks reaped profits from their dishonest bond sales. The Bush and Obama administrations appointed the bankers to administer hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts to their banks. pp. 91-95.
I OWE HOW MUCH?
The orgy of subprime and subsubprime lending ballooned Americans' mortgage debt from $5.3 trillion in 2001 to $10.5 trillion in 2007. p. 87. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=...
USELESS GOVERNMENT
U.S. Government procedure for investigations: "adopt a narrative:" define the status quo as a success. Bury all evidence suggesting otherwise. pp. 8-9. The bailout administrators ignored the many ways fraudsters could steal the money. p. 22. The Treasury Department gave banks hundreds of billions of dollars with no verification that the banks were "healthy and viable," no oversight, no terms or conditions to comply with. pp. 71-77. Inspectors general behave as lapdogs to the agencies they're supposed to watch. p. 61. Congressmen and senators enact laws without reading them. pp. 50, 96. Senators questioning administration officials don't care what the answer is. They care only about getting their question on the news. p. 30. "I had done one of the stupidest things possible. I had trusted someone." pp. 79-80. The FBI tips off the press ahead of search warrants and arrests. p. 108. If a program is unpopular, give it a new name. p. 123.
GOVERNMENT AGENCY PRIORITIES
1. Maintaining and hopefully increasing their budget. 2. Giving the appearance of activity. 3. Not making too many waves. p. 51.
PLAY TO WIN
The only way to make things happen in Washington is to make sure that Congress and the public are aware of the problems you see, so they can then pressure the agency to resolve them. The media are key. p. 65. In Washington, being loud is a virtue p. 104.
WILL 2008 REPLAY 1929?
2008: Mortgage fraud is epidemic. p. 14.
2008: 2.3 million foreclosures. p. 4.
Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed due to investments in bad mortgages. pp. 17-18, 142.
September 2008: Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are about to collapse. p. 25. If all the dominoes fall, there could be another Great Depression. p. 43.
AMERICANS LOSE
September 2007 to December 2008: people's 401(k)s lost $2.8 trillion, 1/3 of their value. p. 4.
October 2008: Congress passes Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a $700 billion Wall Street bailout. pp. 1, 103-104.
October 2008: Hank Paulson, George W. Bush's secretary of the Treasury and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, /gives/ the 9 largest banks (view spoiler)[(Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, State Street, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon) (hide spoiler)]$125 billion, instead of using the money to buy bad mortgages, as Congress wanted. p. 26. The total was $290 billion by November. By December, AIG and Citigroup would be bailed out again, along with General Motors, Chrysler, and Bank of America. pp. 43, 102-105.
November 2008: Obama wins election.
EXECUTIVE BAILOUT
AIG gave its executives $168 million in bonuses. pp. 60, 138.
WHERE'S THE MONEY?
Banks did not lend out the money they were bailed out with. So the bailouts did not help end the recession, did not help businesses nor homeowners. pp. 72-73, 98-99.
DEMOCRATS ARE NO BETTER
January 2009: Obama becomes president. Banker Timothy Geithner, Treasury secretary, dismisses efforts to protect TARP from fraud. p. 113.
HOMEOWNERS NOT BAILED OUT
Though $50 billion was allocated ostensibly to help homeowners, it did not reduce the amounts they owed on their mortgages, and provided no relief to unemployed homeowners. It was a boon to the financial industry, in new fees they could charge. p. 128.
April 2010: Obama's troubled-assets relief program administrator, Wall Street banker Herb Allison, advises Neil Barofsky, the government's special inspector general (SIGTARP), that Barofsky has a choice: make the financial power brokers look good and get a plum job, or tell the truth and end up discredited and unemployed. pp. xi-xvi.
The Spanish Inquisition, Henry Kamen, 1965, 334 pages.
In the 1000s thru 1400s, Castile (Central Spain, as distinct from Aragon (Valencia, Aragon, and The Spanish Inquisition, Henry Kamen, 1965, 334 pages.
In the 1000s thru 1400s, Castile (Central Spain, as distinct from Aragon (Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia) on the east coast and Portugal on the west coast)) was engaged in its effort to reconquer Spain from the Moors, who had conquered in the 700s. Reconquest destroyed religious and racial coexistence. pp. 11-12.
In the 1300s, with only Granada still Muslim, the pogroms commenced. pp. 13, 23.
As of 1482, of 9 million Spaniards in Castile and Aragon, 0.8% were higher nobility and 0.85% were town aristocracy: they controlled 97% of the land. p. 14. The Spanish Church had an income of over 6 million ducats a year, when a ducat was 8 days wages of a skilled worker. p. 14. The Archbishop of Toledo received 80,000 ducats a year.
In 1492, the Christians conquered Granada. p. 14. Ferdinannd and Isabella decreed the expulsion of all Jews from Spain. pp. 16-17, 32. Middle-class Jews in banking and business had encroached on aristocratic hegemony. p. 17.
Sadly, Jews "voluntarily" converted to Christianity remained in charge of banking and business. p. 17. The Pope had established the Inquisition in 1478 to examine the genuineness of their conversion. pp. 17, 44. Those New Christians aren't like us Old Christians. pp. 19, 24. Oh, and we don't want any Protestants here. p. 19.
Spaniards never filled the banking and business void left by expelled Jews and persecuted conversos. p. 20. Italians and Germans filled that void in Spain. p. 21.
The Inquisition began to collapse only when the regime which created it began to wither. p. 21.
Jews monopolized the Spanish medical profession in the 1200s. pp. 24, 37-38. Only Jews bid for positions as tax and tithe collectors. pp. 24-25. Jews were government ministers, financiers, treasurers, and managers. p. 25. "All sought after comfortable posts and ways of making profits without much labor." pp. 25-26.
All the noble houses included conversos, so had no right to claim true nobility. pp. 29-30. Only elites descended from peasants were guaranteed to be free of Jewish ancestry. p. 30. This fact threatened the whole social order. p. 30.
Most conversos were secretly or openly practicing Jews. Mocking God and the true religion. p. 30.
Later conversos had little or no religion, doing without books or rites to avoid detection. p. 31.
First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat, Christopher W. Shaw, 2021, 229 pp., ISBN 9780872868779, Dewey 383.4973
An ouFirst Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat, Christopher W. Shaw, 2021, 229 pp., ISBN 9780872868779, Dewey 383.4973
An outstanding view of what is happening to the US Postal Service and why.
BUILD IT UP Rural Free Delivery became nationwide in 1902, despite its cost. p. 16. [Other government departments are likewise not expected to fund themselves.]
From the 1850s until Parcel Post began in 1913, a price-gouging cartel monopolized package delivery, providing inadequate service at extortionate rates. In 1910, Wells Fargo paid its stockholders a 300% dividend. Parcel Post delivered 300 million parcels its first 6 months, faster and cheaper than its rivals. pp. 16-17.
Rural Free Delivery and Parcel Post were acts of empowerment for rural Americans. p. 18.
Public institutions threaten profiteering. p. 18
Eliminating the one federal agency that directly serves citizens daily would go far toward eliminating government services altogether. p. 19.
The Republican-majority Postal Board of Governors appointed Republican donor and labor-law-violating trucking-firm owner Louis DeJoy as postmaster general in 2020. DeJoy immediately degraded service. Federal judges, concerned about vote-by-mail, pushed back. pp. 23, 88, 98-99.
Airline deregulation led to mergers, frequent bankruptcies, cramped seating, fewer nonstop flights, more charges, less service, nonrefundable tickets, and no more competition. p. 28. More than 300 airports lost commercial airline service altogether. p. 29. After intercity bus deregulation, Greyhound abandoned 1,313 communities, and raised fares 25%. Greyhound acquired its only competitor. Now in North Dakota it stops only in Fargo, on the Minnesota border. p. 30. Now more than 20% of rural Americans have no intercity bus service.
The European Union in 1998 required member states to end their postal monopolies. p. 32. New Zealand deregulated post in 1998. 906 post offices were reduced to 103. Sweden ended its mail monopoly in 1993. It now has no post offices. p. 33. Rural delivery is twice a week. Government subsidy will be needed to continue postal service at all. Some rural Norwegians must now travel for hours to pick up their mail. p. 34.
A major goal of privatization is to end a successful public institution. p. 35. The United Kingdom's Royal Mail is being deliberately destroyed. It was privatized in 2013, despite opposition by two-thirds of Britons. It was sold for much less than its value. 6,750 post offices were closed. Remaining ones are government-subsidized.
Deregulation would be even worse in the U.S. because it is so vast, and urban/rural and rich/poor disparities so great. (The U.K. has about the land area of Oregon.) p. 37.
In 1859, the U.S. Post Office Department spent $1.2 million delivering mail by stagecoach to California, and earned only $34,497 for it. p. 37. Before the transcontinental telegraph and railroad, this subsidization linked the Pacific Coast to the rest of the country.
In the early 1800s, the Post Office earned most of its revenue from business-to-business letters in the Northeast, subsidizing newspaper and rural mail. Private carriers began skimming some of that lucrative business. Congress reasserted control in 1845 by reaffirming the Post Office's monopoly, and slashing postage rates. p. 38.
The Southern gentlemen governing the Confederacy hated taxes and government services as much as today's rich do. They demanded the Confederate postal service be self-sufficient. So rates were high, service was poor, soldiers and civilians had lower morale due to few letters and little reliable news. p. 40.
A private company can go out of business. Executives of Montana Power Company in 1997 sold the business, started and failed a telecom, took bankruptcy, and made off with millions of dollars. p. 41. Montanans' utility bills soared.
U.S. Government-subsidized magazine postage in the early 1900s helped "muckrakers" reach millions of readers, who clamored for reform, such as of unsanitary meatpacking, and usurious monopoly rail rates. pp. 47-48.
SHUT IT DOWN USPS has closed half its post offices, relocated thousands of others away from foot-traffic downtowns to automobile-only outskirts, and reduced window hours. All, ostensibly, to save minuscule amounts of money--violating federal law, which requires that post offices not be closed merely because they sell fewer stamps than their operating costs. Costing customers much more than USPS saves, in driving, waiting, inconvenience, lack of timely delivery. Costing small-town businesses the walk-in traffic they rely on, for which the post office was the anchor. Chapter 4. USPS is selling its impressive, historic downtown post-office buildings to undo the work of the New Deal. These are sold for less than they're worth. Often, USPS then leases space in the building, at excessive rental prices. And, USPS will maintain the building it no longer owns, at its own expense. These are not decisions that would be made by someone who believes in public service. Much of it violates current federal law. p. 75-78, 96-97, 99. USPS removed half its collection boxes. p. 85.
FOR WHOM? The big cut-rate mailers, big competitors, and big contractors have a seat at the postal decision-making table. The American people do not. pp. 88, Chapter 8. Valpak Coupons weighs in on every case before the Postal Regulatory Commission, demanding minimum service for everyone, for minimum rates for itself. pp. 89-91, 94-95, 97, Chapter 6. Airlines successfully lobbied Congress to prohibit USPS from operating its own airplanes. Yet airlines focus on passenger service; hauling mail is a low priority. pp. 103-104, 165. USPS ended up giving contracts worth billions of dollars to FedEx and UPS to fly the mail. p. 109. FedEx pays $0 in taxes. FedEx has been granted a monopoly on hauling air cargo between the U.S. and China. FedEx and UPS pushed for the Trans-Pacific partnership, which would outlaw any national law or regulation that has the effect of limiting corporate profit. pp. 105, 107. FedEx spent $42 million successfully lobbying Congress to prevent its workers from unionizing. pp. 105-106. UPS spent $68 million lobbying from 2010-2019, successfully killing ergonomic standards and regulations designed to reduce repetitive-stress injuries. p. 106. UPS and FedEx fight hard and successfully to keep the US Postal Service as noncompetitive as possible. p. 107. UPS is trying to prohibit USPS from providing parcel service at all. FedEx wants USPS to cease to exist. pp. 108-109. Only the US Postal Service delivers to every address. If private oligopolies again capture all the business, they can again gouge their customers and/or reduce service, with impunity. Parcel-mail revenue is necessary to keep USPS in business, now that banks and businesses no longer have to send statements and bills by first-class mail. p. 110. A business lobby got Congress to prohibit USPS from offering coin-operated photocopy machines. p. 113. Private packing stores succeeded in prohibiting USPS from offering packing service at competitive rates. p. 114.
NO MAILGRAM Businesses have succeeded since the 1950s in prohibiting USPS from offering an electronic mailgram service: "Want to send a document? Let us electronically transmit it: We'll print it at, and deliver it from, the destination post office." This would be the biggest boon to post since paper. It would have the impact of paper, with 1-day service everywhere. It would be popular and profitable. It would lessen the need to haul paper around the country. Businesses from Western Union to FedEx have made sure it doesn't happen. pp. 114-117. The 2006 law kept USPS from offering new services, period. p. 117.
PRIVATIZED PRESORT USPS has already largely privatized mail sorting, creating a low-wage presort industry by offering deep discounts on bulk business mail. By law, discounts cannot exceed costs USPS avoids by accepting presorted mail. In fact, discounts greatly exceed costs avoided. USPS has built the processing plants, bought and installed the equipment, and hired the staff necessary to handle peak volume. When volume is less than peak, the costs of processing the mail have already been paid. To pay Pitney Bowes or United Mailing to sort mail while the USPS processing and distribution center is operating below capacity, avoids few costs. Moreover, the mail USPS receives from the presort houses must then be resorted into carrier-route sequence along with all the rest of the mail. Presort houses are able to work cheaply only by paying less than living wages. pp. 136-137. Public assistance to low-wage, low-benefit Walmart employees costs federal, state, and local governments $6 billion per year. Employees of presort houses are in the same boat. p. 138.
GOVERNMENT LIKE A CORPORATION If USPS management succeeds in destroying USPS's ability to process peak volume, more mail will enter the building than can leave; mail will stop moving. It happened in the main Chicago office in 1966. pp. 141-142. The 1966 Chicago mail logjam ostensibly justified a presidential commission, of corporate executives, who said, make the postal service like a corporation. Not beholden to citizens. Decisions dictated by top management, controlled by a board of directors, composed of business executives. The particular logistical problems the Chicago logjam exposed were not addressed by changing the goals and governance of the organization away from public service and toward enriching private corporations. Chapter 8. Postal governance is now expressly political: the nine governors and five commissioners, by law, have up to five and three, respectively, of the same political party. In recent decades, this has meant a Republican majority, which "post-partisan" Obama appointed too. The current (2022) board, including postmaster general and deputy, comprises 5 Republicans, 4 Democrats, and 2 independents, with the fifth Republican having been appointed by Biden. Democratic presidents get their campaign money from, so owe allegiance to, lords of Wall Street, just as Republicans do. Even the Democratic appointees have largely led cheers for using government to help enrich corporate owners. Representatives of citizens and workers have been conspicuously absent. Unelected governors are no less political than congressmen, mostly are no more knowledgeable on, nor interested in, postal issues, but are completely unaccountable to the public, and are even more responsive than Congress is, to the wants of the corporate vultures circling the postal service. pp. 145-158.
CONGRESS BOWS OUT Congress was eager to rid itself of responsibility for postal employees. Reorganization did that. p. 149-150.
WE NEED A LOBBYIST Ralph Nader recognizes the need for a lobbying organization on postal issues, representing the American people, as distinct from representing the financial interests of big mailers, big competitors, big suppliers. Nader /did not/ organize such a lobbying group. No one else has either. pp. 154-158.
Postal leadership serves the advocates of privatization.
FEWER PLANTS, SLOW SERVICE USPS ended overnight local-area delivery in 2015, with plans to reduce what were once some 500 processing and distribution facilities to 135. A piece of magazine-size mail sent from El Paso to El Paso now makes a 760-mile round trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Most of the transportation is contracted out, to firms such as Postmaster General DeJoy's. p. 93, 96-98.
READ MORE: See also savethepostoffice.com by Steve Hutkins.
Christopher W. Shaw also wrote an excellent history of banking in the United States, /Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic/, 2019. Includes the history of postal banking, and why it is still needed.
The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), second edition 1968, 527 pages, Dewey 321.9, ISBN 9780156701532.
More than, "Why Hitler? WhyThe Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), second edition 1968, 527 pages, Dewey 321.9, ISBN 9780156701532.
More than, "Why Hitler? Why Stalin?" Truths about violent power; the peculiar organization and psychology of mass movements.
A military-industrial complex is a prerequisite for totalitarianism.
Totalitarian movements are organizations of atomized, isolated individuals. Stalin atomized his people by skilful use of mass murder. pp. 323, 348, 474.
Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. pp. 339, 374. The aim of totalitarian education is not to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any. p. 468.
Totalitarianism is distinct from mere Fascism, authoritarianism, autocracy, dictatorship, despotism, or tyranny. A tyrant deflects criticism onto his subordinates. A Leader can't tolerate criticism of his subordinates, they act in his name. p. 375. A mass leader can never admit an error. p. 349. If he wants to correct his own errors, he must liquidate those who carried them out. p. 375, 412, 422.
The Nazis learned as much from American gangster organizations as their propaganda learned from American business publicity. p. 345. Mass movements operate in a post-truth, post-reality world. pp. 382-385, 388, 391, 474-475.
Up to now (1st edition, 1950) we have just two totalitarian regimes: Bolshevism since 1930, Nazism 1938-1945. p. 419.
Totalitarianism is characterized by purposeless, persistent, mass murder. p. 445. The purpose of the purposeless carnage is total control of the population, and indoctrination of the executioners. pp. 456, 464-468.
Antisemitism became a political platform in Europe. Arendt details how, why, when, where, and who, pp. xi-xvi, xli-xlii, 1-120, 483-491. Imperialism. pp. xvii-xxviii, xlii, 121-302, 491-498. Totalitarianism. pp. xxix-xl, xlii-xliii, 303-479, 499-507.
ANTISEMITISM Anybody in Russia may suddenly become a victim of police terror. p. 6.
Imperial European countries between the French Revolution and World War I came to need more financing than even the Jews could provide. So, Jews lost their power, leading to contempt of them, without losing their wealth, leading to hatred of them. p. 15.
Only in France did the state create mercantile businesses and manufacturers, which could not compete in the free market; yet the state bureaucracy that perpetuates them has persisted. p. 16.
Around 1900, imperialist expansion, improving instruments of violence and state monopoly of them, made the state lucrative for the (nonJewish bourgeois) owning classes. p. 18.
Beginning 1492, Jews were expelled from cities. p. 19. Jews still handled finances for princes. The rise of the nation-state beginning 1789 ended the Jews' status as moneylenders to feudal princes. pp. 20, 51. The last Jew-financed war was Otto von Bismarck's 1866 war with Austria, after the Prussian parliament denied him credit. Only Frankfurt, among great urban centers, never expelled Jews. p. 26. Pre-WWI, sons of wealthy Jews flocked into newspapers, publishing, music, theater, and other liberal professions or intellectual pursuits. p. 52.
Jews had managed peace negotiations, including arranging reparations payments, up through Bismarck's win over the French in 1871. When "victory or death" became policy, the Jews were of no use. p. 21. In 1871, Rothchild supported monarchists, against the existing republican government, which then had no use for him. p. 97.
Jewish moneylenders had been inter-state go-betweens, serving but not considered as belonging to one state. To preserve his house's inter-European status, Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) set up his five sons in Europe's five financial capitals: Frankfurt, Paris, London, Naples, and Vienna. Beginning 1811, Rothschild monopolized European state loans. p. 26. Rothschild owned the Austrian railroads. p. 43. Rothschild financed the Bourbons, maintained close ties to Louis Philippe, and flourished under Napoleon III. p. 47. The more Disraeli learned about the Jewish bankers' well-functioning organization, the more he saw it as a secret society with the world's destinies in its hands. p. 76.
The lower middle classes of Germany, Austria, and France in the late 1800s lost their government-protected guild status and had to compete with wage-slave products from north England. Trying to rise before they sank, they bet and lost their shirts in financial scandals. They blamed Jews, who were not at fault but only middlemen. pp. 36, 95-99. After 1881, swindle became the only law in France. Every faction sought only defense of vested interests, by any means, preferably corruption. Every political party had a Jewish bagman. p. 98. The decayed state no longer could, and no longer had a need to, protect Jews. p. 99.
Jesuits controlled the Catholic Church's international policy, from 1800 on. Their rule required novices to prove they had no Jewish blood back to the fourth generation. p. 102. Jesuits were determined that there be no army officers immune to the influence of the confessional. p. 103.
The mob is the residue of all classes. pp. 107, 155. It clamors for strongman leadership, as it hates society it is excluded from. French notables and politicians produced the mob in a series of scandals and public frauds. p. 107.
Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons were all seen by the mob as secret societies bent on world domination. p. 108.
Only around 1900, with Russian pogroms, did Jewish poverty enter London. p. 70.
IMPERIALISM 1884-1914 was the period of imperialism: quiet in Europe, shock and awe in Asia and Africa. The bourgeoisie ruled, but didn't seek political power until the state failed to grow the economy. p. 123. With Hitler would come mob rule. p. 124.
In less than 20 years, colonial powers gained: Britain: 4.5M sq. mi, 66M people France: 3.5M sq. mi, 26M people Germany: 1M sq. mi, 13M people Belgium .9M sq. mi, 8.5M people. p. 124.
Trade and economics had already involved every nation in world politics. p. 124.
Conquest and empire had succeeded only where, as with Rome, government was based on law: so the Roman empire imposed a uniform law everywhere. Nation-states by contrast are governed by popularity among a homogeneous people. Colonies of Others can be governed only by tyranny. p. 125. Colonized people are not citizens of the colonizing nation, and are subject to separate laws. p. 127. Colonial-government officials knew that they must rule by tyranny, including massacre. The governments of England, France, and Germany kept colonial governors from going to the extremes that would've been needed to keep the colonies. pp. 133-134, 216.
Imperialism started its politics of expansion for expansion's sake no sooner than around 1884. p. xvii. Imperialism was born when the ruling class of capitalist production came up against national limitations to its economic expansion. p. 126. Capitalism requires constant growth: the owning class imposed this law on their governments, and demanded expansionist foreign policy. p. 126. Imperialist expansion had been touched off by a curious kind of economic crisis, the overproduction of capital and the emergence of "superfluous" money, the result of oversaving, which could no longer find productive investment within the national borders. p. 135. Export of military power followed meekly behind export of money. Fraudulent foreign-investment schemes were rife in the 1870s. p. 135. Only the national military could enable low-risk overseas profit. p. 136. Now power could appropriate wealth, without mutually-beneficial trade and without ethics. p. 137. Unlimited national military power begat unlimited private wealth.
Violence for power's (not law's) sake doesn't stop until there is nothing left to violate. p. 137. Political structures become mere temporary obstacles to ever-growing power. p. 138.
Imperialism is the first stage of rule-by-the-rich. (Not the last stage of capitalism.) p. 138. Greed-is-good first became foreign policy, then domestic policy. p. 138.
LEVIATHAN Competitors must be policed, or one will kill the others. Competition between fully armed business concerns (empires) ends in victory for one and death to the others. p. 126.
If Thomas Hobbes were right that man lacks the capacity for responsibility, and seeks only and always his own advantage, be it by murder or deceit (/Leviathan/, 1651), then no body politic could ever form. Arendt says Hobbes knew that people by nature aren't just evil, but that Hobbes's man /is/ the successful captain of industry. No compassion, most vicious and grasping. A fiend: only dominance or submission are possible. pp. 139-147. It's to protect such men from /each other/ that they require an absolute-power, tyrannical leviathan government. p. 141. Which does not protect the rest of us from them.
If the leviathan government succeeds in destroying all others, it can only destroy itself to restart the never-ending accumulation of power. p. 147.
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE MOB AND CAPITAL Colony-acquisition papered over Europe's troubles; the apparent security was a sham. p. 147.
The human debris that each crisis idled were as unneeded as the parasitical holders of idle wealth. The export of idle men to the U.S., Australia and Canada was a safety valve for England. p. 150. Idle men and idle wealth rushed to South African diamonds and gold in the 1870s and 1880s. p. 151. Together they parasitized Africa for the most superfluous and unreal goods.
Imperialists divided mankind into master and slave races, to unify the mob. Don't think of yourself as the useless lump you are! You're a white man! /We/ are the master race! pp. 152, 155. Politicians believed that only imperialist expansion could unify their class-fragmented nations. Imperialists became parasites on patriotism. The cry for unity was the same as a war cry, yet no one saw that imperialism would be permanent war. p. 153. Imperialism would've necessitated the invention of racism as the excuse for its deeds even if no race-thinking had existed. pp. 183-184.
By 1900 the owning classes owned the civil servants. p. 154.
The Boers of South Africa descend from Dutch people put there around 1650 to supply vegetables and meat for ships to-and-from from India. Boers usurped black tribal rulers, becoming parasites on black labor, which was just enough for the Boers' subsistence. Boers became contemptuous of work. pp. 191-193. By 1923, 10% of these idle Boers lived on charity, their black workers having left them. pp. 194-195. The British idlers who rushed to the gold soon also became parasites on black labor. p. 198.
British holders of idle wealth demanded and received British government protection of their South African investments. So, by 1900, their Jewish financial middlemen were no longer crucial. p. 202. Boers demanded and received whites-only payrolls. p. 204. Jews manufactured furniture and clothing, were shopkeepers, physicians, lawyers, journalists. They /worked/. Not. Done. Work is for blacks and coloreds only, according to white mob mentality. Expel the Jews! pp. 204-205.
Two main political devices of imperialist rule: race (discovered in South Africa) and bureaucracy (discovered in Algeria, Egypt, and India). p. 207. An underprivileged group can by violence create a class lower than itself. Learned in South Africa. p. 206.
TOTALITARIANISM
Mob attitudes were bourgeois attitudes without the hypocrisy. p. 334.
Unemployment in 1932 Germany was near 50%. p. 265. Germans saw Hitler as the lesser evil than Communism or the status quo.
Minorities within nation-states must sooner or later be assimilated or liquidated. p. 273.
Gigantic lies can be established as unquestioned facts; truth can become a matter of power and pressure and infinite repetition. p. 333. Totalitarianism doesn't simply say there's no unemployment--it abolishes unemployment benefits as part of its propaganda. p. 341. When Stalin rewrote the history of the Russian Revolution he destroyed not only existing books and documents but also their authors and readers. pp. 341-342, 353. Stalin took care to say the opposite of what he did, and do the opposite of what he said. p. 362, 415. To be believable, a lie must be enormous. pp. 439, 470-471.
Allies' willingness to compromise with Hitler in Munich and Stalin in Yalta increased the Leaders' hostility. p. 393. The less the internal political opposition, the more terror. pp. 393, 464.
Real power begins where secrecy begins, in totalitarian states. p. 403, 414. The country is run by the secret police.
Arendt leaves untranslated some German, French, Latin, Yiddish, and Italian phrases. (She also knew Greek and Hebrew; she had a Ph.D. by age 23.) pp. vii, xv, xxiii, 4, 32, 33, 36, 63, 79, 80, 86, 87, 102, 104, 113, 118, 125, 129, 137, 144, 146, 158, 162, 171, 173, 175, 212, 264, 275, 278, 279, 280, 283, 289, 321, 334, 335, 336, 360, 422, 440, 443, 451, 459, 462, 464, 470, 471, 475
(I'm relying on online translation:)
Weder dem Vergangenen anheimfallen noch dem Zukünftigen. Es kommt darauf an, ganz gegenwärtig zu sein. = Neither succumb to the past nor to the future. It's all about being present. --Karl Jaspers. vii mutatis mutandis = with the necessary changes having been made. xv, 113 sine ira et studio = without anger and passion xxiii judenrein = Jew-free 4 expressis verbis = explicitly 32 unsere Leute = our people 33 Gründungsschwindel = founding scam: founding a stock company with borrowed money; repaying after registering the company, so it actually has no capital. 36 primi inter pares = firsts among equals 63, 162 neque in toto orbi alicui nationi inservimus = neither in the whole world do we serve any nation 63 corpo = body 63 la capitale du dixneuvième siècle = capital of the 19th century 79 citoyen = citizen 79, 144 fin-de-siècle = end-of-century (here meaning around 1900) 79, 81, 86 apologia pro vita sua = apology for his life 80, 86, 87 bordereaux = classified military documents 101, 104 homines religiosi = prophets or saints 102 sub iudice = being litigated 104 schnorrer = freeloader 118 Ostjuden = Jews from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Moldova. 118 le plébiscite de tous les jours = the daily referendum 125 Périssent les colonies si elles nous en coûtent l'honneur, la liberté. = Perish the colonies if they cost us Honor, Liberty. 125 ius = right 129 imperium = government 129 force noire = black force (African colonial conscripts) 129 ultima ratio = final thought 137 summum bonum = highest good 144 raison d'état = reason of state: justification for a nation's foreign policy on the basis that the nation's own interests are primary. 146, 321 Weltanschauung = worldview 158, 336, 470 la raison est de tous les climats = reason is of all climates 162 Tiers Etat = third state = everyone who wasn't clergy or noble. The politically powerful ones were (are) the bourgeoisie. 162 taedium vitae = weariness of life 171 fils des rois = sons of kings 175 tertium comparationis = third part of the comparison = commonality 212 volte-face = about-face = reversal of policy 264 modus vivendi = way of life 275 cuius regio, eius religio = whose realm, their religion = the ruler sets the religion 275 la capitale des apatrides = the capital of stateless people 278 manquant gravement à leurs devoirs de citoyen belge = seriously failing in their duties as Belgian citizens 279 quid quid est in territorio est de territorio = what is in the territory is of the territory 280 réfugié provenant d'Allemagne = refugee from Germany 283 Heimatlose = homeless 289 la trahison des clercs = the betrayal of the clerics 334 épater le bourgeois = impress the bourgeois 334 erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral = food comes first, then morality 335 Dreigroschenoper = Threepenny Opera 335 bagatelles pour un massacre = trifles for a massacre 335 esprit de sérieux = spirit of seriousness 336 Volksgemeinschaft = national community 360, 422 parcere subjectis = spare the subjects 440 les jours de notre mort = the days of our death 443 Volksnutzen = public benefit 451 homo homini lupus = a man is a wolf to another man 459 consensus iuris = law by consent 462 lumen naturale = natural light 462 ius naturale = natural law 464 Ordensburgen = schools for Nazi elite 471 homo faber = man the maker, or workingman 475
Hannah: repeat after Mark Twain: Keep your feelings where you can reach them with the [English] dictionary!
Ambiguous: p. 57: where she says, "turn of the 18th century" she means around 1800. p. 211: "Strange and curious lands attracted the best of England's youth since the end of the 19th century." She surely means much longer ago.
See also: /The Rise of the House of Rothschild/, Egon Cesar Conte Corti, 1927. /The Emergence of the Jewish Problem, 1878-1939/, James Parkes, 1946, chapters iv, vi. Gilbert Keith Chesterton: /The Crimes of England/, 1915; /The Return of Don Quixote/, 1927.
Thomas Ray
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