Emails Show TPP 'Collusion' Between Big Banks & Obama Administration

[Octafish]

13. And the rich get beyond rich.

From 2011:

Who Benefits From Austerity Politics?

by Rob Urie
CounterPunch, NOVEMBER 18, 2011

With so called “technocrats” being installed in Italy and Greece to lead governments through austerity programs, the discussion of who benefits from these programs and who pays remains largely in the background. When benefits are discussed they are usually couched in terms of systemic benefits under the guise that if the “system” benefits then everyone benefits. But the austerity programs being implemented straightforwardly benefit the large banks to the detriment of the citizens of these countries.

The banks see two benefits from austerity policies: the use of state power to enforce their claims that debts be repaid and they see asset prices driven down. The first goal is intuitive enough and it well explains why even in the U.S. government policies have been designed to facilitate debt repayment rather than to dismiss debts outright. No matter how malodorous the terms under which bankers lent the money, as long as borrowers can be forced to repay it, the banks benefit. And with sovereign debt, the “borrowers” being forced to repay the debt tend to be ordinary citizens who had little to do with incurring it and who just as likely saw no benefit from it.

The second benefit to bankers is less intuitive but more insidious. After all, why would banks want to see the value of the assets that are the collateral for the loans that they’ve made fall? The reason why is that the assets that the banks own are the loans that they’ve made and not the underlying collateral. As long as borrowers are forced to repay these loans the payments that the banks receive become worth more as collateral values fall because the money received will then buy more. Expand this idea to state assets in Greece and Italy and the banks can own water systems and roads from which they can extract fat incomes in perpetuity.

CONTINUITY...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/18/who-benefits-from-austerity-politics/

Explains what's happening to Puerto Rico and Detroit and a lot of other places filled with, uh, "Democrats."