Promoting Peace and Prosperity instead of War and Austerity
In Defense of Kabul Bank Robbers
The Guardian, which is an actual newspaper in the UK, is making a big deal out of the fact that a few well connected Afghans stole about a billion dollars from their “Kabul” Central bank. There is now a dispute between the Afghan government and the International Monetary Fund over who should pay for the stolen billion dollars. http://www.readersupportednews.org/news-section2/309-13/6305-us-occupied-afghanistan-facing-insolvency-within-a-monthIn case you don’t have time to read the article, here is the nitpicking complaint of the IMF:
“The IMF sees two aspects as vitally important. Firstly, an agreement that Afghan taxes, not foreign aid, will repay the $820m taken out of central bank reserves last year. Second, they want serious criminal investigations against managers and shareholders, many of whom enjoy high level political support, who illegally borrowed huge sums of interest-free cash from the bank.”
Here is the reply of the Afghan Government: “On these issues, the international community totally disregards the legal processes of Afghanistan."
It certainly seems like a double standard for the IMF to prosecute bankers in Kabul for taking out “huge sums of interest-free cash” when bankers have been doing essentially the same thing in the US for years – with the approval of our government.
The article also claims that this dispute might cause the Afghan government to collapse within a month. Now, it might be worth a billion dollars and save us money in the long run if the corrupt Afghan government folds now rather than later on. But in this article, I want to focus in on the plight of the bank robbers – I mean bank managers – as the IMF actually wants to send these poor souls to jail for what might be considered normal corporate banking practices in the United States.
To begin with, relatively speaking, the theft of one billion dollars is hardly worth discussing. After all, a couple days ago, a half billion dollars disappeared from the Washington State budget and it barely made for a couple lines in the local papers. A few days earlier it was revealed that $7 billion dollars had been stolen from the $12 billion dollars in crates of cash that were shipped to Iraq by our last President to “stabilize the Iraq economy.” I wish they would have shipped a few of those crates of cash to Washington State – because our economy could also use a little stabilization. Even $7 billion would go a long way towards restoring jobs in our State. But apparently if our own citizens are not in active rebellion, we do not qualify for crates of cash.
When we hear about a billion here or a billion there being stolen from the American people, we need to keep things in prospective and not over-react. For example, our State legislature just cut more than $2 billion in funding for our public schools – while protecting about $50 billion per year in tax breaks for wealthy corporations.
Some of us might think that those billions in corporate tax breaks are robbing our children of billions of dollars. But it is all perfectly legal because our corporate controlled legislature passed a bill making it legal. Also our Governor said that we can not get rid of the billions in corporate tax breaks because “the voters spoke in the last election” that they want to keep all those corporate tax breaks on the books and fire thousands of teachers instead.
I don’t recall that particular question being on the ballot last Fall – but perhaps I just missed it. It is strange that our State Constitution talks about funding schools being the “paramount duty” of the legislature while not mentioning a word about funding wealthy corporations. But I guess I must not be interpreting the Constitution correctly. Still, it is hard to get excited about a billion being stolen by Kabul bank robbers when $50 billion is being stolen by wealthy corporations right here in Washington State every year. For more on this theft, see our website: realwashingtonstatebudget.info.
Now I am sure some will say that we must give billions in tax breaks to wealthy multinational corporations in order to create jobs and a business friendly environment. But if that is the case, then why is it that the more tax breaks we hand out to wealthy corporations, the fewer the jobs are left in the US?
It is also strange that the IMF was upset that the Kabul bankers stole the billion dollars by borrowing it with no-interest loans - especially since our own Federal Reserve has been passing out trillions in no-interest loans to major banks and Wall Street speculators here in America for the past several years. Since when are billions in no-interest loans illegal? The Federal Reserve just calls it Quantitative Easing. Our US bankers even made billions more loaning our government back the billions we just loaned them – by charging us interest on the money we gave them for free. So in a way, our US bankers behaved much worse than the Kabul bankers – and not one of the US bankers have gone to jail.
Then there is the Wall Street Bail Out of a couple of years ago. According to Senator Bernie Sanders, the Bush Administration gave his Wall Street “too big to fail” buddies more than one trillion dollars (which is more than one thousand times greater than the amount stolen by the Kabul bankers). So it hardly seems fair to put the Kabul crooks/bankers in jail while the US crooks/bankers were put in charge of our economy.
We should also compare the paltry one billion stolen by the Kabul bankers to the two billion dollars per week our war-happy nation is spending on wars all over the globe. The billion stolen by the Kabul bankers is only a couple days worth of loose change compared to the money we are giving away to war profiteers. We have already spent a trillion dollars and counting just on killing Osama Ben Laden. Now that he is dead, we are tracking down everyone who ever sent him an email… especially if that email came from someone in an oil-producing country.
If the billion dollars stolen by the Kabul bankers helps end the war even one week sooner, it will be well worth the cost. Instead of putting those poor misguided souls in jail, we should do what we do with corporate bank robbers, I mean corporate executives, here in America – put them in charge of their country. Oh wait, we already did that.
Last but not least, there is the cost of the Corporate War on our Middle Class. Most Americans have (or had) their life savings tied up in their homes. That was certainly the case with me. Thanks to Wall Street speculators crashing our economy and causing one in four Americans to lose their jobs, home prices have plunged in the past two years. I personally lost over $300,000 in net worth. In total, American middle class families lost over $10 trillion dollars. At the same time, bankers worked out a sweetheart deal with Congress whereby Congress not only pays the bankers in full for foreclosing on homes – but also let’s the bank keep the home! This gives bankers huge financial incentives to foreclose on homeowners. If this is not highway robbery, I don’t know what is.
If more Americans understood the connection between the trillions we are spending on war and the trillions being given to wealthy corporations and the corruption of our government and collapse of our economy, maybe Americans would be more active in creating our own kind of rebellion here in the US. And maybe then we would qualify for some of those billions in crates of cash our government is shipping all over the world.
In the meantime, I say “leave those Kabul bankers alone.” The billions of dollars being stolen in Kabul is nothing compared to the corporate theft occurring right here in America every day of the week.
Regards,
David Spring M. Ed.
Director Coalition for Peace Now
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.