TRUMPISM: TRUMP? part 7
Marina da Silva
If you know the history of the Trump family, how the fortune of Trump father, Fred Trump, was formed, you know that it took place with alliances and cronies with the mafia ingrained in both civil construction and politics, judiciary and public administration.2 It is what in Brazil we call "jeitinho" or "one hand washes the other", "take it, give it here", in short, corruption and corrupt people perched on all levels of power. Some call this crony capitalism. Donald Trump has always been a fool and a braggart and precisely because of these qualities and others, he fit like a glove into the celebrity media machine (from the 1980s onwards, it was the era of the paparazzi and tabloids or the brown press, a low-grade journalism and stink fueled by lies, gossip, cheap sensationalism) and made use of it to keep the "truth" at bay: Trump is the American nightmare, Midas with a rotten hand, failed entrepreneur/businessman, fake billionaire celebrity and indebted2 who had/has his ego fueled by another big fool, Roger Stone3; this yes, had his dream and pretension of being one day president of America thrown into limbo when he used corrupt political strategies that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon [1913-1994], 37th president of the United States (1969-1974) in the Watergate scandal. 4
1. The eighties belong to Ronald Reagan, sports broadcaster, actor, turned politician, governor of California (1967-1974), 40th president for two terms (1981-1989) received the mission to impose the "neoliberal state" and the neoliberal practices to the US, the most important: drastic reduction in social spending or diversion of public funds to the richest; tax cuts (income and business profits) for the richest; financial market deregulation; war on drugs, Iran-Contra scandal5;
2. George Bush-father, politician, diplomat, businessman, was Reagan's deputy and 41st president (1989-1993) continued the political erosion of the "American welfare state"; made the "Persian Gulf War 1990-1991"6;
3. Bill Clinton, attorney, was governor of Arkansas for two terms, 42nd president for two terms (1993-2001) responsible for the "prison industry" with the capture of labor in the "large incarceration, especially of blacks and Latinos"7, has supported more financial deregulation of Wall Street gambling, which will lead to increased financial speculation and betting, as well as stealing customers' money;
4. George W. Bush-filho, empresário/político, governador do Texas (1995-2000) 43º presidente por dois mandatos (2001-2008); fez outra guerra ao golfo pérsico contra Iraque (transmissão televisiva); ataque terrorista de 11 de setembro 2001; crise financeira mundial ou crise Subprime que massacrou a economia em várias nações no primeiro mundo e resto do mundo8; socorro aos bancos, seguradoras causadores da crise, um verdadeiro assalto ao povo estadunidense que perdeu renda, economias e investimentos em imóveis sobrevalorizados e que passaram a valer nada em 2008.idem
5. Barack Obama: Lawyer, charismatic politician, 44th two-term president of the United States (2009-2017), first black president, one black in the White House. Obama is the man! He has achieved what no other president of the Number One powerhouse, which owns the planet, has achieved: to envelop the world with his charm and charisma. Obama is the personification of the "Big Stick policy": speak softly and sit down with the puia, the batten, the golf club, drones, bombs! Allah my good Allah! Obama is the "political heir" of the massacre, oops, of the 2008 crisis that literally screwed the American people and several nations in the world, except Brazil. Here, the Subprime super crisis was, in the words of President Lula, "a little ripple"! Obama is the "suspect", oops, unlikely candidate without the great crisis of 2008. It is the last hope, the last sighs and vestiges of faith and trust in "traditional" politics and politics: YES WE CAN! Obama is the president-turned-celebrity on social media and has used, in addition to donations from large corporations, this phenomenal "web/network" feature to capture voters and win both contested elections.9
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Before arriving at Donald Trump, it is necessary to make a little stop in the history of a "short" century, 20th century... And we will focus here only on the social and economic development of the white class, what Hollywood sold to the world: Empire State, castles , mansions, country houses by the lakes, vacations in Asem or the European Alps, planes, jets, big offices, huge houses, mega apartments, biggest buildings in the world, rich people, millionaire people, billionaire people, cars, perfect gardens , perfect families, jobs, top universities, science and technology, rockets, space shuttle, top appliances, movies and TV series, travel, malls, consumerism, parks, Disney...land, cold war, atomic bomb, fear of terrorists, Russian communists, etc.; cigarettes, music and Coca-Cola, in short, the American dream. Who wants to Be a Millionaire? Come to America and realize the dream of getting rich, victorious! Yes, the United States provided this possibility of society, the nostalgic post-World War II years. Science, cutting-edge technology, innovation, superiority of the people, creativity, risk, adventure, bet, prosperity! A world of entrepreneurs and consumers and a full table! From the 1970s onwards... The story is different: structural unemployment, precariousness of the world of work, lowering of the middle class income, family indebtedness, student indebtedness, increase in drug consumption, increase in violence, exacerbation of racism , xenophobia, misogyny, GLBTQIAphobia, etc, etc. The country is deindustrializing.10
"The transformation of the structure of the labor market was paralleled by an equally important change in industrial organization. (...) Organized subcontracting opens up opportunities for the formation of small businesses and, in some cases, allows older systems of domestic work to , artisanal, familial (patriarchal and paternalistic (...) revive and flourish, but now as centerpieces rather than appendages of the productive system. The rapid growth of "black", "informal" or underground economies has also been documented throughout the advanced capitalist world, leading some to detect a growing convergence between "third world and advanced capitalist" labor systems (HARVEY, 1998:p.145) Google translation
FINANCIAL INNOVATIONS AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE DERIVATIVES MARKET IN THE US
1973-2009
1970. Beginning of mortgage-based securities certificates.
1972. Opening of the Chicago Currency and Futures Market Agency.
1973. Chicago Exchange Options Agencies; commencement of trade in future capitals.
1975. Trading in US Treasuries and mortgage-backed futures stocks.
1977. Trade in Treasury futures stocks.
1979. Unregulated and unreliable trading, especially currency futures, becomes common practice. The "banking system in the dark" emerges.
1980. New mechanisms for investments in derivatives linked to foreign currencies, currency swap.
1981. Creation of portfolio insurance; mechanisms for investments in derivatives linked to foreign interest rates, interest rate swap; futures markets in eurodollars, certificates of deposit and Treasury instruments.
1983. Market for Options on Currencies, Equity Securities and Treasury Instruments; creation of payment obligations with property as collateral.
1985. Deepening and expansion of options and futures markets; beginning of virtual trading and creation of market models: statistical arbitrage strategies for derivatives are created.
1986. Unification of stock markets, options and global currency trading, the Big Bang.
1987-1988. Creation of Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's), as well as Collateralized Action Obligations (CBO's) and Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (CMO's).
1989.New mechanisms for investments in interest rate futures.
1990. Creation of mechanisms for investments in credit insolvency and stock indices.
1991. Approval of "off-the-books" investment vehicles, also known as special interest entities or special investment vehicles.
1992-2009. Rapid evolution of the volume of trade by all these instruments. The volume of this trade, negligible in 1990, reached more than 600 trillion dollars a year in 2008. Source: HARVEY, D. appendix 2
In the 1980s, the era of the financial industry begins (drastic fall in capital invested in industries and an increase in capital in financial speculation on the stock exchanges) leading to the super concentration of wealth, financial crises and lower incomes and more precariousness of the world from work. A capitalism...for few, says Robert Reich, former secretary of Bill Clinton.11 The dream is over!
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"I did not foresee the power, but I should have, the power of the reaction to the civilizing effects of the Sixties. I did not anticipate the power of the reaction to that. The opposite reaction.(...) a huge, concentrated and coordinated corporate offensive that began in the 1970s to try to reduce equality efforts."12
In the 1970s and 1980s, "flexible accumulation" comes in the same process and movement as the techno/scientific revolutions of the means of production of goods, the means of communication and transport, etc. and the establishment of the authoritarian neoliberal state and deregulation of the market. financial and labor, a complex process, still in motion, reduced to two words: globalization and neoliberalism (free trade, financial deregulation, privatization, flexibility and/or extinction of labor rights, social rights, weakening unionism, precarious working conditions and salary). In the midst of so many changes in the production process, what kind of human sociability is it possible to build? For "flexible" production, flexible individuals are required, that is, with a high degree of adaptability, without attachment to time/space and open to constant changes, to bets, to the rich, to entrepreneurship. Living on the edge is constantly taking risks, being open to innovations and challenges for both capital and work. Living with inconsistency and instability and bearing the results, especially with the failure and losses imposed by flexible accumulation as the sole and exclusive fault of the worker.
MAIN CRISES AND STATE AID TO COMPANIES,
1973-2009
1973-1975. Collapse of real estate markets in the US and England; US federal, state and local fiscal crises (New York City on the brink of bankruptcy), rising oil prices; and recession.
1979-1982. Rising inflation and the Volcker interest rate shock lead to the Reagan Recession, with an unemployment rate above 10% in the US and consequences in other countries.
1982-1990. Debt crisis in developing countries (Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Poland, etc.), caused by the Volcker shock of rising interest rates. US investment bankers ARE HELPED BY AID TO DEBT COUNTRIES ORGANIZED BY THE US Treasury and a revitalized IMF (free of Keynesians and armed with “structural adjustment” programs).
1984. Continental Illinois Bank is bailed out by the Fed, the Treasury and the US Investment Banking Control Agency.
1984-1992. Bankruptcy of US savings and loan institutions that invested in the real estate market. Closure and government bailout of 3,260 financial institutions. Recession in the property market in England after 1987.
1994-1995. Mexican peso bailout to protect US investors with stakes in Mexico's high-risk debt. Massive losses in derivatives that culminated in the bankruptcy of Orange County and severe losses in other city governments with similar high-end investments.
1997-1998. Currency crisis in Asia (in part caused by housing market). Lack of liquidity leads to mass bankruptcies and rising unemployment, creating opportunities for predatory institutions to make quick profits after punitive IMF interventions (South Korea, Thailand, etc.)
1998. Fed bailout of Long Term Capital Management, USA.
1998-2001. Capital flight crisis in Russia (which went bankrupt in 1998), Brazil (1999), culminating in the Argentine debt crisis (2000-2002), the devaluation of the peso, followed by mass unemployment and social upheavals.
20001-2002. Collapses of the dot.com bubble and financial markets; bankruptcy of Enrom and Word.com. The Fed cuts the interest rate to balance the stock and futures market (the housing bubble begins).
2007-2010. Crises linked to the real estate market in the USA, England, Ireland and Spain, followed by forced mergers, bankruptcies and nationalizations of financial institutions. State aid around the world to institutions that invested in derivatives, hedge funds, etc., followed by recession, unemployment and collapses in international trade, in addition to various Keynesian-style stimulus packages and liquidity injections by central banks. Source: HARVEY, D. Appendx1
America was massacred, read, American people and a huge chasm between the poor 99% and rich/billionaires 1% under the auspices of the STATE opened wounds, hatred, anger, rancor and distrust in the representative democratic political system of the United States. This change in the profile of capitalist production and accumulation, the result of the techno-scientific innovations of the so-called effort of the Second World War, the information technology revolution (means of communication, transport), mechanization based on microelectronics; Robotization, genetic engineering, home computers, the internet divides the world into winners and losers. A new era still under way is called flexible accumulation by David Harvey + surveillance capitalism by several other thinkers. The myths of the "founding fathers" propagated by the Radicals for capitalism": free market, individualism (greed, selfishness), liberty, minimal state and blah fall to the ground. The 21st century, which would be the culmination of neoliberalism, the century of Mises, Hayek, Friedman collapsed as a farce in the 2008 Subprime crisis and with the internet and hyper connectivity from the "web" or World Wide Web14 and the emergence of social networks (Yahoo (1994); Google (1998); Orkut (2004, many users in Brazil); Facebook (2004, in 2012 it exceeds 1 billion users); Reddit (2005); Twitter (2006); What'sApp (2009); Instagram (2010); Snaptchat (2011); Telegram (2013); Tik Tok (2016, China), citing top companies.
The continuous changes, the main characteristic of flexible capitalism, creates the impossibility of forging cooperation, strong and deep ties in the world of work, because this same corrupt and corrosive "flexible" character spills over into society. The stultification and blunting of the spirit in activities that are increasingly simple, repetitive and of low subjective content (does not require special training or qualification) contaminate private life, human relationships. The risk culture despises knowledge, denies knowledge, science, routine, rigidity (time/space in the construction of one's history and society) and obstacles to capital. The culture of risk intensifies competition, heightens anxiety, and divides the world into winners and losers. Donald Trump is the big bet both of the new class that got rich at the Wall Street Casino and of the owners and controllers of the gigantic corporations of the high-tech industries of information and manipulation of private data for all kinds of deals and financial corruption and the most unthinkable: manipulation of the political game, world balance of power and world geopolitics that took place under the beard of Uncle SAM in his own territory by a group of billionaire founders of "The Movement", whose main founder, flag bearer and spokesperson is Steve Bannon, linked to Cambridge Analytica17, a business arm that stood out from the SCL group and which, among other phenomenal shit, manipulated Brexit (2018), the elections in the US (2016) and Brazil (2018).
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Fonte
1. SILVA, Marina da. https://marinasdasilva.blogspot.com/2021/10/brazil-trumpism-part-6.html
2. Sobre o tema ver: TRUMP, AN AMERICAN DREAM https://www.netflix.com/watch/80206600?trackId=13752289 documentário;
3. GET ME ROGER STONE https://www.netflix.com/watch/80114666?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C2%2C84b2363dad12eddf179d872747a92ed5a8c7817c%3A07e926b39a177123f9f469fc28678a1e9c952ede%2C84b2363dad12eddf179d872747a92ed5a8c7817c%3A07e926b39a177123f9f469fc28678a1e9c952ede%2Cunknown%2C%2C%2CtitlesResults. documentário
4. Sobre o tema ver: A HISTÓRIA DE WATERGATE https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/timeline.html
5. Sobre o caso IRÃ-CONTRA ver: https://periodicos.ufes.br/dimensoes/article/view/21705
6. Guerra do golfo pérsico. ver: pesquise Google
7. Sobre a "Era do grande encarceramento de negros, latinos, etc) ver: doc. 13ª Emenda https://www.netflix.com/watch/80091741?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Cb33ffdeec0c0a1d46e27e9a73ab454cf907c8d35%3A05d4c992340a31c72afe0498bc77aedecbe6083e%2Cb33ffdeec0c0a1d46e27e9a73ab454cf907c8d35%3A05d4c992340a31c72afe0498bc77aedecbe6083e%2Cunknown%2C%2C%2CtitlesResults; série Orange is the new Black https://www.netflix.com/watch/70259443?trackId=13752289
8. FERGUNSON, Charles H. O SEQUESTRO DA AMÉRICA. Como as corporações financeiras corromperam os Estados Unidos. Rio de Janeiro: editora Zahar, 2013.
9. Sobre o tema ver: The Great Hack, documentário Netflix.
10. REICH, Robert. Saving capitalism, documentário Netflix
11. SMIL, Vaclav. MADE IN USA: The rise and reatreat of american manufacturing. London, MITpress, 2013. ISBN 978-0-262-31675-0 e-book
12. CHOMSKI, Noam. Requiem to American Dream. YOUTUBE https://youtu.be/JxaDwKj7wek;
13. HARVEY, David. A CONDIÇÃO PÓS-MODERNA; RIFIKIN, Jeremy. O FIM DOS EMPREGOS; KENNEDY, Paul. PREPARANDO PARA O SÉCULO XXI; ANTUNES, Ricardo. ADEUS AO TRABALHO?; HARVEY, D. O ENIGMA DO CAPITAL e as crises do capitalismo; PIKETTY, Thomas. O CAPITAL no século XXI; ANDERSON, P. Pós-Neoliberalismo.
14. Sobre a WORD WIDE WEB ver https://tecnoblog.net/responde/quem-inventou-o-computador/; https://www.i-tecnico.pt/world-wide-web-o-que-e/; https://tecnoblog.net/responde/quem-inventou-a-internet/
15. Sobre The Moviment ver: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-47388774; https://www.france24.com/en/20180814-europe-nationalists-populists-bannon-unite-far-right-wing-movement-brussels-eu; https://time.com/5882072/rise-and-fall-of-steve-bannon/; https://www.britannica.com/biography/Steve-Bannon
16. SILVA, Marina. Trumpismo, parte 6
17. Sobre Cambridge Analytica ver: The Great Hack, documentário.
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FILMS, SERIES AND DOCUMENTARIES ABOUT THE FINANCIAL INDUSTRY? Get the popcorn....
1. A FRAUDE ( Rogue Trader), 1999 filme sobre mercado futuro e opções
2. WALL STREET, poder e cobiça. filme 1987. Negociatas na Bolsa de valores
3. TRABALHO INTERNO (INSIDE JOB), 2010, desregulamentação e ganância. Crise subprime 2008; documentário de Charles Fergunson citado no texto.
4. O LOBO DE WALL STREET. filme 2013 negociatas e apostas de um corretor de valores( baseado em caso real)
5. A GRANDE APOSTA, filme 2015 Apostas no estouro da bolha imobiliária, crise subprime 2008
6. A LAVANDERIA. Filme, 2019. Lavagem de dinheiro. As negociatas PANAMÁ PAPERS