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Amy Goodman: […] We’re also broadcasting across

Canada on community radio stations, where Naomi Klein

is, in Canada, in Toronto, the award-winning journalist,

syndicated columnist, author of the bestseller The Shock

Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her last piece

in The Nation is called “In Praise of a Rocky Transition.”

And the piece before that is in Rolling Stone; it’s called

“The Bailout Profiteers.” Naomi Klein, lay them out.

Naomi Klein: Well, what I do in the Rolling Stone piece is

talk about the really uncomfortable parallels between what

we saw in Iraq in the Green Zone and what we’re seeing

in the US Treasury. It’s sort of the Green Zoning of the

US Treasury. If we think about the way the Bush

administration handled the occupation of Iraq, the working

assumption was that everything that could be privatized,

everything that could be outsourced, would be

outsourced. And it has been very much a corporate war,

as you well know. But at the same time, the handing out of

the contracts in the early days was done very, very

quickly, because, of course, there was this manufactured

emergency that we all know was based on lies, in

retrospect. But that was used, that state of emergency

was used to justify no-bid contracts, to justify the fact that

there was very little oversight of the contractors.

And we’re seeing all of this repeat now, but just on such a

massive scale, such a larger scale. First of all, when

Henry Paulson and Neel Kashkari, his deputy, announced

the $700 billion bailout, they also announced that they

would be outsourcing all of the work. They have handed

out the work to many of the banks and Wall Street law

firms that really created the crisis in the first place. But in

the same way, there’s also been very little competition for

these contracts. They were handed out very quickly. And

at the same time, as we were discussing earlier, there is

very little oversight over the process.

So, just to give you one example that I discuss in the

Rolling Stone piece, there’s the general contractor, the

really big contracting -- it’s kind of the Halliburton of

Treasury contracts -- went to the bank, Bank of New York

Mellon. Bank of New York Mellon, by the way, is one of

the nine banks that got the equity deals, the cash

injections in exchange for equity. And they are also very

deep in this derivatives mess themselves, but they have

been hired to handle a huge part of the bailout. So what I

argue in the piece is that we actually have it backwards. 

It’s not the banks that have been partially nationalized; it’s

Treasury that has been partially privatized by the very

banks that created the crisis in the first place.

One of the things that’s really extraordinary about the

Bank of New York Mellon contract is that, unlike the

Halliburton contract or the Bechtel contract or the

Blackwater contract, we actually don’t know how much it’s

worth. It’s quite extraordinary. It’s redacted. The part of

the contract that would tell taxpayers how much of their

money is being given to this bank and how they’re

calculating the payment for Bank of New York Mellon is all

blacked out. I was reassured by Treasury three weeks

ago that they would be disclosing that information within

days. They still haven’t disclosed it.

Another contract that I look into in the Rolling Stone piece

is for the first law firm that received a contract to advise

Treasury on the equity deals, on those key equity deals

that we’ve now found out are such bad deals, the ones

that didn’t get it in writing that the banks were supposed to

start lending, the ones that only got five percent dividends

for US taxpayers when Britain got 12 percent. Well, the

bank that got the -- sorry, the law firm that got the contract

to advise Treasury is called Simpson Thacher Bartlett.

This is a Wall Street heavy-hitter firm. They’ve negotiated

some of the largest bank mergers in recent years. And

what we discovered in researching this piece is that Bank

of -- is that Simpson Thacher had represented seven of

the nine banks that received the equity deals that they

were advising Treasury on. And, you know, what’s

important to understand is that these banks that Simpson

Thacher represents on other matters represent far more

of their revenue than US Treasury. So what I am arguing

is that they are in a very large conflict of interest,

because they really are a bankers’ law firm, not a public

interest law firm.

Amy Goodman: Naomi Klein, can you talk about what is

happening right now in Washington, what took place over

the weekend, the meeting of the G20?  

Naomi Klein: Well, you know, this was an epic lost

opportunity, Amy, because I think a lot of people assume,

certainly assumed originally, that what would come out of

this catastrophe, what would come out of this crisis,

would be a re-examination of some of the thinking that

has underpinned so much of economic policy in the past

thirty years. And, as I said earlier, Barack Obama turned

his election campaign into a referendum on the mania for

deregulation and free trade and really less trickle-down

economics. He said the idea of giving more and more to

the people at the top and waiting for it to trickle down to

the people below, and that really resonated with voters,

and they elected him on that platform. And let’s remember,

Amy, because this really is about democracy, that his

campaign turned around when the economic crisis really

hit Wall Street. He was losing ground to McCain when the

crisis hit Wall Street, and Obama started using this

language of really putting the ideology of deregulation on

trial. That’s when his numbers turned around. That’s when

he went on his winning streak that took him all the way to

Election Day. And so, I think that there has been this

assumption that, OK, now we’re going to fix it.

But if we look at what just came out of the G20 summit,

it’s really been a reassertion of the very -- this very

ideology of deregulation. On the one hand, you have the

statement that you started the program with, where the

world leaders said that this crisis was born of the shadow

banking industry, not enough oversight, not enough

regulation, too much complexity. At the same time, when

they talk about solutions, they’re calling for resurrecting

the failed World Trade Organization talks that collapsed

this summer. And we heard, if you recall, this summer,

when the Doha talks collapsed, that globalization and the

Washington Consensus were dead, because developing

countries had rejected it.

The other thing that they’re calling for is a greater role for

the International Monetary Fund. And it’s important to

understand that the reason why the International

Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization and the

whole free trade agenda, generally, has been in collapse

in recent years is because countries around the world are

no longer willing to accept the conditions attached to

joining this club, the conditions attached to an

International Monetary Fund loan. In reasserting a greater

role for the International Monetary Fund, in calling for the

World Trade Organization talks to get back on track,

these world leaders are actually calling for more financial

market deregulation, more of the same.

I’ll give you one example: the Doha talks. Although much

of the focus has been on agricultural subsidies, part of the

Doha talks is about financial sector deregulation and the

push, particularly from Britain and the United States, for

countries like China and India to open up their financial

services markets to US and British and European

companies who want into these markets. And what’s

really striking is that you hear this language of anti-

protectionism, you know, that we can’t turn away from

free trade. What this really means, Amy, is that Citibank

and Barclays want to go into China, want to go into India,

and they want to buy up Chinese and Indian banks, they

want to get into these markets. But what’s so incredible in

this moment is the hypocrisy, just the rampant hypocrisy,

because Barclays and Citibank and all of the other banks

that would benefit from this type of free trade are of

course the very banks that are receiving massive state

protection from their own governments in the form of the

bailouts that we’ve just been discussing. So these sort of 

corporate welfare bums now want to use the language of

anti-protectionism to go into other countries and buy up

their assets, but, of course, they are being subsidized so

heavily by their own taxpayers. So it’s a moment of high

hypocrisy.

It’s also a moment of, as I said at the beginning, lost

opportunities, because -- just to give you one example,

think about what these leaders could do if they really

wanted to, in terms of collaborating to harmonize

regulation, so that banks were no longer able to pit

governments against each other for who could offer the

lowest taxes, who could give them the best tax havens,

who could offer the lowest regulation. There was just a

hearing on Friday about hedge funds that Henry Waxman

convened. And before those hearings, we heard from one

of the wealthiest hedge fund owners in the country, Ken

Griffin, who’s actually an Obama supporter. Ken Griffin, a

billionaire hedge fund owner -- he owns Citadel

Investment -- was asked by the committee whether he

believed that hedge funds were sufficiently regulated and

whether they should be more highly taxed. What Ken

Griffin said was that if that happened, there would be

even more jobs in the financial industry in the United

States lost to Britain. And he talked about how his heart

breaks when he goes to Canary Wharf in London and

sees how many good jobs have been lost to Britain, which

has, in many ways, lower -- less regulation of hedge

funds.

But what’s so striking about that, Amy, is that it would be

so easy in this moment for the US government and the

British government to actually harmonize their regulations

so that they could -- so that companies like Citadel

Investment and other hedge funds would really have

nowhere to run. And when you have a crisis like this,

which so clearly shows the need for those types of

regulations, when you have an election like there just was

in the United States, where people have said clearly that

this is a priority, the leaders have an opportunity to act

and to close down these tax havens, to prevent this ability

of governments to be pitted against one another, and

have a race to the top as opposed to a race to the

bottom. But they blew that opportunity, and they actually

called for less regulation.

Amy Goodman: Just underscoring what you wrote on the

whole issue of the difference in the bailouts, the British

Prime Minister Gordon Brown extracting meaningful

guarantees for taxpayers, voting rights on banks, seats

on their boards, 12 percent in annual dividend payments

to the government, a suspension of dividend payments to

shareholders, restrictions on executive bonuses, a legal

requirement banks lend money to homeowners and small

businesses. Here in the United States, Washington Post

reporting major US banks are on pace to spend more than

half their bailout money on rewarding their shareholders.

The thirty-three banks are set to receive some $163

billion in government bailouts; half of that sum will go to

paying off shareholders over the next three years.

Naomi Klein: Yeah, this bailout is really not a bailout at all;

it’s a parting gift to the people that the Bush -- that

George Bush once referred to jokingly as “my base.” You

know, in one of my columns recently, I likened it to what

European colonial rulers used to do when they finally

realized they had to hand over power; they would loot the

treasury on the way out the door.

And the reason why there has been this dramatic change

in policy just in recent days, where Henry Paulson has

said, “OK, well, we’re not going to do what we originally

had said at all,” which is use the bailout money to buy

distressed assets, to buy bad debts, “Now we’re going to

go from these equity deals with the banks to bailing out

credit card companies” -- the reason for that is that that

first $250 billion was essentially money down the drain.

They are admitting that it didn’t do what it was supposed

to do, which was increase lending. So, now they’re

making it up as they go along. It’s take three, take four,

take five. But we’re supposed to somehow not notice that

$250 billion, an astronomical sum, was just wasted, going

to bonuses, going to shareholder payouts, going to CEO

salaries. And now they’re trying another method to get

lending going. But it really was the parting gift, Amy.

And if we think about what this money means, and this is -

- you know, this crisis isn’t over, and the same people

who justified this bailout, who clamored for this bailout,

are the very people who are going to turn around and say

to Barack Obama, “We can’t afford for you to make good

on your election promises. We can’t afford universal

healthcare. In fact, we can’t afford what meager services

Americans get in exchange for their tax dollars, like Social

Security payments.” We’re already hearing this lowering

of expectations now in the national discourse. So, the

money -- this really is, you know, reverse Robin Hood

gone mad. The money has been given to the people who

needed it least, and it’s going to be used to justify

austerity measures imposed against those who need it

most. It’s going to be used to justify cuts to food stamps.

It’s going to be used to justify cuts to Social Security, to

healthcare, let alone being used to justify why more

ambitious plans for a national healthcare program, for

green energy are not affordable. So people have to be

ready for this. You know, the next shock is yet to come.

Amy Goodman: Your final thought, this, on the bailing out

of the auto industry, the Big Three in Detroit, starting with

General Motors?

Naomi Klein: Well, obviously, it shouldn’t be a blank

check. You know, I always think about what the

International Monetary Fund does when developing

countries come and ask for a loan. Think about what

they’re doing right now. The International Monetary Fund

says, “You want a loan? Well, here’s our list of

conditions.” They used to call it structural adjustment. The

same thing could be done to the auto industry. If they’re

coming for a bailout, they should be structurally adjusted,

and taxpayers should be playing IMF to the auto industry

and insisting that they change the way they work, that

they build green automobiles, that they protect jobs. It

can’t simply be a blank check.

That said, what’s really disturbing is the way the Bush

administration appears to be using the desire among

Democrats to bail out the auto industry to horse trade the

free trade deal with Colombia. You know, what we’re

really seeing, Amy, is a resurrection of the entire free

trade -- discredited free trade agenda. This crisis being

used -- the shock of this crisis being used to resurrect all

of these discredited deals. The Colombia free trade deal,

the International Monetary Fund, the Doha round, they’re

all coming back from the dead at precisely the moment

that we should be actually burying, for good, this whole

agenda of deregulation.

Amy Goodman: Naomi Klein, I want to thank you for being

with us, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist,

author of the bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of

Disaster Capitalism. Her latest piece is in The Nation; it’s

called “In Praise of a Rocky Transition.” Before that, in

Rolling Stone magazine, and that’s called “The Bailout

Profiteers.” This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org,

the War and Peace Report. Naomi was speaking to us

from the CBC TV studios in Toronto.

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