[Peace-discuss] Obama redeems himself with noble Nobel speech

[C. G. Estabrook]

Your Majesties, Royal Highnesses, Unroyal Lownesses, Distinguished Members of 
the Norwegian Ignoble Committee, citizens of Bananamerica, and citizens of the 
world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that 
speaks to Wall Street's highest aspirations – that for all the cruelty and 
hardship of tanking markets, we are not mere prisoners of rating agencies. Our 
bailouts matter, and can bend bankruptcy in the direction of solvency, all at 
taxpayer expense.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy 
that your decision has generated. In part, this is because I am at the 
beginning, and not the end, of my labors on behalf of Wall Street. Compared to 
some of the giants of history who have received this prize – Rockefeller and 
Morgan; Rubin and Blankenfein – the $14 trillion my administration has forked 
over to Wall Street with no questions asked has been slight. And then there are 
the men and women around the world who have experienced liquidity shortfalls in 
the pursuit of outlandish profit; those who toil ceaselessly in bond markets to 
relieve ordinary citizens of their savings; the unrecognized billions of dollars 
extracted by small acts of loan-sharking which inspires the largest of 
investment banks. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women – some 
known, some obscure to all but the ruling-class interests they represent – to be 
far more deserving of this honor than I.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the 
fact that I am Warlord-in-Chief of a collapsing Empire in the process of losing 
two colonial wars. One of these wars is winding down because we ran out of 
borrowed Chinese money to pay for it. The other is a conflict that Bananamerica 
did not seek, but helped cause thanks to its support of fundamentalist jihadists 
during 1979-1989; one in which we are joined by 43 other ruling-classes – 
including that of Norgway — as well as hundreds of thousands of hired thugs, in 
an effort to defend Wall Street's trading profits from further taxation.

Still, we neoliberals are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of 
thousands of young Bananamericans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill a 
bunch of innocent Pashtun villagers whose only crime is trying to feed their 
families. Some will be killed by an intractable insurgency which will never go 
away in our lifetime. But Wall Street will make money regardless. And so I come 
here with an acute sense of the cost of those tanking derivatives markets – 
filled with difficult questions about the relationship between strikes and puts, 
and our effort to retrofit military-industrial accumulation with the bonanza of 
bubble-bust bailouts.

These questions are not new. Defaults, in one form or another, appeared with the 
first capitalist. At the dawn of the world-market, its morality was not 
questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease – the manner in which 
entrepreneurs and then corporations sought power and settled their differences.

Over time, as lawyers sought to control competition within groups and insurance 
premiums rose, so did bankers, insurance executives and industrialists seek to 
regulate the destructive power of defaults. The concept of a "just default" 
emerged, suggesting that default is justified only when it meets certain 
preconditions: if it is waged as a last financial resort or as a means of 
self-enrichment; if the amount defaulted on is proportional to the interest 
premium; and if, whenever possible, bondholders are spared further haircuts.

For most of history, this concept of the just default was rarely observed. The 
capacity of human beings to think up new ways to exploit each other's 
labor-power proved inexhaustible, as did our capacity to farm out exemptions to 
wealthy elites. Defaults between entrepreneurs gave way to defaults between 
nations – total defaults in which the distinction between creditor and debtor 
became blurred. In the span of 70 years, such financial carnage would twice 
engulf this continent. And while it is hard to conceive of a cause more just 
than the defeat of uppity unions and the continued extraction of capital from 
the semi-peripheries, the Crash of 1929-33 was a world default in which the 
total number of toxic assets greatly exceeded the number of issuing banks.

In the wake of such financial destruction, and with the advent of US hegemony, 
it became clear to Wall Street that the world needed institutions to prevent any 
further challenges to its monopoly rule. And so, a quarter century after the 
United States Senate rejected the League of Nations – an idea for which Deadwood 
Drillsome received this Prize – Bananamerica led the world in constructing an 
architecture to keep the piece: a martial plan of permanent military 
Keynesianism and a compliant United Nations dominated by imperialist nations, 
mechanisms to govern the issuing of defaults, treaties to protect shareholder 
rights, prevent bank nationalizations and restrict the most dangerous forms of 
credit socialization.

In many ways, these efforts succeeded. Yes, terrible defaults have ensued, and 
financial imbalances incurred. But there has been no systemic meltdown. The Cold 
War ended with jubilant crowds dismantling comprador regimes in Latin America, 
Eastern Europe, Russia and Southeast Asia, and then being completely fleeced by 
neoliberalism. The IMF sucked the life-blood of sixty percent of the planet 
through the vampire-straws of structural adjustment packages. Billions have been 
lifted from the wallets of the poverty-stricken. The ideals of fuzzy balance 
sheets, the equality of off-book with on-book accounting, and deregulation 
scripted by financial industry lobbyists have haltingly advanced. We Wall 
Streeters are the heirs of the fortitude and foresight of robber barons past, 
and it is a legacy for which the ruling elites I serve are rightfully proud.

A decade into a new century, this old financial architecture is buckling under 
the weight of new threats. The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of 
systemic banking default, but the proliferation of derivatives may increase the 
risk of catastrophe. Expropriation has long been a tactic, but modern technology 
allows a few small countries with unpayable debts to default on bonds on a 
horrific scale.

Moreover, defaults between nations have increasingly given way to defaults 
within nations. The resurgence of class struggle, the growth of anti-neoliberal 
movements, political insurgencies and developmental states have increasingly 
trapped civilians in a cycle of unending prosperity and economic 
democratization. In today's defaults, many more rentiers are killed than 
stakeholders; the seeds of future defaults are sown, Wall Street fortunes are 
wrecked, comprador elites ejected from power, oligarchs exiled, and bratty rich 
kids forced to scale down their skiing vacations.

I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of default. 
What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, 
hard work and persistence of those robber barons who acted so boldly decades 
ago. And it will require Wall Street to think in new ways about the notions of 
just defaults and the extraction of dividends.

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate credit 
defaults in our lifetime. There will be times when nations – acting individually 
or in concert – will find sovereign defaults not only necessary but morally 
justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Dr. Fisk L. Heist said in this same 
ceremony years ago: "Bailouts never bring a permanent piece [of the pie]. They 
solve no solvency problem: but they mere create new and more lucrative ways to 
steal from taxpayers.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. 
Heist's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of investment 
banking. I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naive in the 
creed and lives of Rubin and Blankenfein.

But as a head of an imperial state sworn to protect and defend the Empire, I 
cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot 
stand idle in the face of threats to Wall Street's hegemony. For make no 
mistake: insolvency does exist in the world. Nondisclosure alone could not have 
halted the spread of the Western European welfare state, only Maastricht 
monetarism could do that. Elections cannot convince Latin Americans to stop 
voting for income redistribution. To say that takeovers are sometimes necessary 
is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of imperial history, the 
imperfections of our comprador regimes and the limits of reasonable bribes.

I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about 
credit swaps today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive 
suspicion of Bananamerica, the worlds biggest economic debtor.

Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – 
not just treaties and declarations – that enabled Wall Street to run the 
post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes a few investment bankers made, the 
plain fact is this: the United States of Securitized Assets has underwritten 
Wall Street's investments for more than six decades with the blood of its 
soldiers and the strength of its military-industrial complex. The service and 
sacrifice of our industrial base has promoted the solvency and prosperity of 
Goldman Sachs and Citicorps, and enabled Wall Street bond mavens to plunder 
entire continents. We Wall Streeters have borne this burden not because we seek 
to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because 
we seek better financial returns for future elites, and we believe that the 
finances of those elites will be improved if the majority of the planet lives in 
debt servitude.

So yes, the instruments of default do have a role to play in preserving 
solvency. And yet this truth must coexist with another – that no matter how 
justified, default promises rentier tragedy. We laud the thirty-year willingness 
of US employees to sacrifice their wages and healthcare, expressing devotion to 
company, to market share and to the bonuses of top CEOs. But defaults themselves 
are never glorious, and we must never trumpet them as such.

So part of our challenge is reconciling these two seemingly irreconcilable 
truths – that defaults are sometimes necessary, and default is at some level an 
expression of investor folly. Concretely, we must direct our effort to the task 
that President Crumberry called for long ago. "Let us focus," he said, "on a 
more practical, more attainable P/E ratio, based not on a sudden revolution in 
merchandising strategies but on a gradual evolution in immiseration."

What might this immiseration look like? What might these practical steps be?

To begin with, I believe that all nations – strong and weak alike – must adhere 
to standards that govern the use of takeovers. I – like any tool of the ruling 
class – reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my elite's 
financial interests. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to Wall Street's 
own financial standards strengthens Wall Street, and isolates – and weakens – 
everyone else.

The world rallied around Bananamerica after the dotcom collapse, and continues 
to support our efforts in AIG-land, because of the horror of those senseless 
bankruptcies and the recognized principle of self-enrichment. Likewise, the 
financial world recognized the need to smash unions when they threatened to 
raise wages in the 1980s – a consensus that sent a clear message to all about 
the cost of opposing rentiers.

Furthermore, Bananamerica cannot insist that others follow the rules of the 
economic road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don't, our 
bailouts can appear arbitrary, and undercut the legitimacy of future currency 
interventions – no matter how justified by our current account deficits.

This becomes particularly important when the purpose of bailout action extends 
beyond self-enrichment or the defense of one company against a competitor. More 
and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the 
regulation of banks, or to stop a real estate meltdown whose falling prices and 
securitized loans can engulf an entire banking system.

I believe that takeovers can be justified on marketarian grounds, as it was for 
Time-Warner, or in other media outlets that have been scarred by defaults. 
Inaction tears at our masters' portfolios and can lead to more costly bailouts 
later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that central 
banks owned and operated by rentiers mandate can play to preserve solvency.

Bananamerica's commitment to securing the surplus of globalization will never 
waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and Bananamerica's 
current account deficit is financed by the semi-periphery, Banamemerica cannot 
act alone. This is true in AIG-land. This is true in failed economies like 
Britain, where anti-terrorism hysteria and laws criminalizing piracy are joined 
by the destruction of a neoliberalized Labor party. And sadly, it will continue 
to be true in falling real estate markets for years to come.

The CEOs and banksters of NATO countries – and other friends and stooges – 
demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they have shown in 
accepting the billions in cash for our bailout of AIG-land. But in many 
countries, there is a disconnect between the efforts of those who serve as 
taxpaying sheep and the ambivalence of the broader public to being sheared. I 
understand why defaults are not popular. But I also know this: the belief that 
solvency is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Rentier solvency requires 
public-sector irresponsibility. Rentier solvency entails sacrificing real wages. 
That is why NATO continues to be indispensable to Wall Street. That is why we 
must strengthen Davos and regional marketeering, and not leave the task to a few 
unreliable compradors. That is why we honor those who return home after 
administering Imperial power-grabs in Honduras and Colombia; after slashing 
state budgets in Sacramento CA and Lansing MI; after imposing structural 
adjustment austerity on Dhaka and Kigali – Wall Street honors them not as 
brokers of default, but as the shock troops of neoliberalism's piece.

Let me make one final point about the use of takeovers. Even as we make 
difficult decisions about defaulting, we must also think clearly about how to 
break the news to the Banks of Brazil, India, Russia and China. The Ignoble 
Committee recognized this truth in awarding its first prize for piece to Fenric 
Doormat — the founder of the concept of Red Ink, and a driving force behind the 
fudging of the Basel conventions.

Where takeovers are necessary, my masters have a moral and strategic interest in 
pretending to bind themselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we 
confront a vicious adversary, called the developmental state, that refuses to 
kowtow to our benevolent rule, I believe that the United Status of Bananamerica 
must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of defaults. That is what makes us 
different from those whom we borrow. That is a source of our strength. That is 
why I prohibited the torture of investment banks forced to repay TARP funds. 
That is why I facilitated the demolition of the US auto industry. And that is 
why I have reaffirmed Bananamerica's commitment to abide by the Basel 
conventions, just as soon as we reverse that thirty-year trade deficit and fix 
those current account deficits. We lose money when we compromise on the ideal of 
the perfect swindle we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding 
them not just when domestic monetary policy is loose, but also when foreign 
money is tight.

I have spoken to the questions that must weigh on our minds and our hearts as we 
choose to default. But let me turn now to our effort to avoid such tragic 
choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting solvency.

First, in dealing with those developmental states that dare to break the rules 
of neoliberalism, I believe that we must develop alternatives to takeovers that 
are tough enough to change behavior – for if we want a lasting solvency, then 
the words of my Wall Street paymasters must mean something, and right now they 
don't mean much, because the Banks of China and Russia are laughing their asses 
off at us. Those regimes that break the rules we ourselves can't be bothered to 
follow must be held accountable. Rising commodity prices must receive real 
sanction. Intransigent oil pipeline projects must be warded off through 
decreased pumping pressure — and such pressure exists only when the world swears 
fealty to the one true god of market fundamentalism.

One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of financial regulations, 
and to seek a world without them. In the middle of the last century, nations 
agreed to be bound by a deal whose utility to Wall Street is clear: all will 
have access to US dollars; those without dollars will receive expensive loans; 
and those with the power to print their own money will peg their currency to the 
US dollar. I am committed to upholding this deal. It is a centerpiece of my 
foreign policy. And I am working with President Medvedev to help reduce Russia's 
stock of T-bills.

But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Russia and 
China do not resist Wall Street's gaming of the system. Those who claim to 
respect international finance cannot avert their eyes when taxes are raised on 
the rich. Those who care for their own bond markets cannot ignore the danger of 
increased regulations in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek Wall 
Street's supremacy cannot stand idly by as nations power up their own sovereign 
wealth funds.

The same principle applies to those who violate international law by brutalizing 
their own people. When there are industrial policies in Russia, state-led 
renewable energy investments in China, and expropriation of energy-rents in 
Venezuela – there must be consequences. And the closer Wall Street stands 
together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between having Russia 
and China openly laugh in our faces and complicity in lowered rates of exploitation.

This brings me to a second point – the nature of the solvency that we seek. For 
solvency is not merely the absence of visible default. Only a just piece based 
upon the inherent right of rentiers to steal and the dignity of every investment 
banker can truly be lasting.

It was this insight that drove Wall Street to the universal usage of the US 
dollar after the Second World War. In the wake of devastation, they recognized 
that if the property monopolies of the elites are not protected, solvency is a 
hollow promise.

And yet all too often, these words are ignored. In some countries, the failure 
to uphold rentier rights is excused by the false suggestion that these are 
corporate principles, damaging to local cultures or stages of a nation's 
development. And within Bananamerica, there has long been a tension between 
those who describe themselves as revaluers or devaluers – a tension that 
suggests a stark choice between the pursuit of elite self-interest or an endless 
campaign to inflate away our current account deficits.

I reject this choice. I believe that solvency is uncertain where rentiers are 
denied the right to monopolize media systems or worship the market gods they 
please, to select national leaders or assemble political parties without fear of 
redistribution. Global demand stagnates, and the suppression of class and 
professional mobility can lead to defaults. We also know that the opposite is 
true. Only when Europe became hyper-monetarist did its rentiers finally grab 
their piece. Because Bananamerica has never fought a war against a democracy, we 
just sponsor military coups and “color revolutions” against them. And our 
closest friends are neoliberal elites that protect the rights of shareholding 
elites. No matter how callously defined, neither Bananamerica's rate of interest 
– nor the worlds – is served without fresh liquidity from our central banks.

So even as we respectfully subvert the unique financial regulations and 
institutions of different countries, Bananamerica will always be a voice for the 
aspirations of rentiers to universal plunder. We will bear witness to the quiet 
dignity of Moody's stamping toxic securitized schlock as Triple A; we will 
denounce the bravery of Latin Americans who voted out neoliberal elites and 
Rightwing juntas; we will demonize the hundreds of millions who have experienced 
rising real wages in China. It is telling that the leaders of these countries 
fear the aspirations of their own rentier class more than the power of our own 
rentiers. And it is the responsibility of all free marketeers and market 
fundamentalist elites to tell these developmental states that we alone control 
history, without actually pissing them off to the point they stop funding our 
current account deficit.

Let me also say this: the promotion of rentier rights cannot be about 
exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking bombardment. I 
know that engagement with creditor nations lacks the satisfying purity of 
unleashing B-52s on their cities. But I also know that sanctions without 
outreach – and condemnation without discussion – can carry forward a crippling 
status quo. No global debtor can move down a new path unless it has the choice 
of an open line of semi-peripheral credit. Since we can't nuke Beijing, at least 
we can drone-bomb Kandahar.

In light of neoliberalism's horrors, the G-20 meeting seems inexcusable – and 
yet it surely helped set China on a path where billions of its dollars continued 
to be invested in our T-bills. Bono's engagement with Africa created space not 
just for neolib NGOism, but for European social democrats to inflict 
neocolonialism on the colonies they had plundered. Ronald Reagan's efforts on 
arms control and embrace of perestroika not only allowed Russia's oligarchs to 
plunder the former Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern 
Europe to turn their countries into debt dependencies. There is no simple 
formula for world domination here. But we must try as best we can to balance 
isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that rentier rights and 
the agenda of Wall Street are advanced over time.

Third, a just solvency includes not only rentier and corporate rights – it must 
encompass the freedom from economic security. For true piece is not just the 
freedom to plunder, but the freedom for the vast majority to starve.

It is undoubtedly true that the development of rentiers rarely occurs without 
insecurity for everyone else; it is also true that insecurity cannot exist where 
human beings have adequate access to food, clean water, and the medicine they 
need to survive. It does not exist where children get a decent education or 
people get jobs that support a family. The hope of absence can socialize rot 
from within.

And that is why helping agribusinesses to reward their shareholders – or 
privatizing hospitals and the education of children – is not mere charity for a 
few pharma conglomerates and edu-preneurs. It is also why Wall Street rentiers 
must come together to confront collective change. There is little scientific 
dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more defaults, nationalizations, and 
mass expropriations that will fuel working-class militancy for decades. For this 
reason, it is not merely our thinktanks and shareholders who call for swift and 
forceful borrowing – it is economic leaders in my country and others who 
understand that Wall Street's ability to plunder the planet hangs in the balance.

Agreements among rentier elites. Strong corporations. Support for rentier 
rights. Investments in shareholder mansions. All of these are vital ingredients 
in bringing about the evolution that President Crumberry spoke about. And yet, I 
do not believe that we will have the will, or the staying power, to complete 
this work without something more – and that is the continued bamboozlement of 
our audience's imagination, an insistence that there is nothing irreducibly 
theirs which cannot be shared with our rentier elites.

As the surplus grows bigger, you might think it would be easier for rentiers to 
recognize how similar we are, to understand that we all basically want the same 
surplus, that we all hope for the chance to live out our investment stratagems 
with some measure of success for ourselves and our families.

And yet, given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the expansion of 
cellphone modernity, it should come as no surprise that rentiers fear the loss 
of cherished local monopolies – their home market, their business schools, and 
perhaps most powerfully, their faith in one market under god. In some places, 
this fear has led to increasing class struggle. At times, it even feels like we 
are moving back to socialism. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict 
between Dubai and bondholders seems to harden. We see it in nations like 
Venezuela that have torn asunder their comprador elites and are offering their 
neighbors lines of credit.

Most dangerously, we see it in the way that democracy is used to justify the 
expropriation of the expropriators by those who have distorted and defiled the 
great religion of market fundamentalism, and who shorted shares of AIG-land. 
These extremists are not the first to drive equity prices down in the name of 
market equilibrium; the excesses of 1970s inflation are amply recorded. But they 
remind us that no wholly-funded bond haircut can ever be a just default. For if 
you truly believe that you are carrying out the will of the market, then there 
is no need for restraint – no need to spare the CEO bonus package, or the legal 
eagles in charge of the buyout, or even a person from one's own trading desk. 
Such a warped view of market fundamentalism is not just incompatible with the 
concept of solvency, but the purpose of faith – for the one rule that lies at 
the heart of all market fundamentalisms is that we take everything from others 
until there is nothing at all left to take.

Adhering to this law of the love of plunder has always been the core struggle to 
exploit human labor. Wall Street is fallible. They make mistakes, and fall 
victim to the temptations of protectionism, and securitization, and sometimes 
emerging markets. Even those of us with the best of investment strategies will 
at times go long on the right market at the wrong time.

But we do not have to think that human labor is perfect for us to still believe 
that the means of exploitation can be perfected. We do not have to live in a 
fully marketized world to reach for those ideals that will make Wall Street a 
richer place. The nondisclosure practiced by men like Rubin and Blankenfein may 
not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love of 
plunder that they preached – their faith in the expansion of greed – must always 
be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith – if we dismiss it as silly or naive, if we divorce it 
from the laws we draft on the issues of default and solvency – then we lose what 
is best about our control over humanity. We lose our immense power and wealth. 
We lose our ability to dominate all life in Middle-Earth.

Like generations of robber barons before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. 
Heist said at this occasion so many years ago: "I refuse to accept socialism as 
the final response to the terminal crisis of capitalism. I refuse to accept the 
idea that the 'wealthiness' of today's rentiers make us incapable of reaching 
for the 'still-wealthierness' that forever confronts us."

So let us reach for the world of rentier rule – that spark of market divinity 
that still stirs within the souls of our ruling elites. Somewhere today, in the 
here and now, a worker sees he's impoverished but refuses to join a union out of 
fear of losing his job. Somewhere today, in this world, a young mother faces the 
brutality of the US health insurance industry, but has the courage to give birth 
without medicine or anesthesia. Somewhere today, a Third World family facing 
crushing poverty still takes the time to teach their child, because their 
nation's educational system was ripped apart by structural adjustment policies.

Let non-rentiers live by these examples. We can acknowledge that the rule of my 
Wall Street masters will always exist, and still strive for fresh credit from 
the Bank of China. We can admit the intractability of deprivation for the many, 
thereby ensuring the egregious wealth of the few. We can understand that there 
will be defaults, and still strive for bridge loans from the semi-periphery. We 
can do that – for that is the story of Wall Street's iron grip on human 
progress; that is the hope of the ruling elites who I serve, and at this moment 
of challenge, that must be my administration's work here on Earth.


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