Miranda Devine is usually the first to turn a ridiculous right-wing rant into a newspaper column.
So she must have been fuming when fellow right-wing columnist Gerard Henderson, in his October 7 column in the Sydney Morning Herald and several other newspapers, explained that the global financial crisis was the fault of Obama-loving "do-gooders" who pushed for housing for the poor.
Henderson was incensed that PM Kevin Rudd had blamed "extreme
capitalism" for the global financial mess. "Today we are still cleaning up the mess of the 21st-century children of Gordon Gecko", Rudd had said in an October 3 speech before a business forum.
Rudd was right about the mess and he's right about corporate greed. How else would you describe the fact that the average cash remuneration (i.e. excluding share options and other benefits) of the chief executives of the biggest 51 companies in the Business Council of Australia is 63 times the average earning of a fulltime worker?
How is it possible to deny extreme greed when the richest 1% in the world own 40% of global wealth while the poorer half of the world shares just 1% of global wealth?
Has this gross inequality messed up the world? Damn right it has. And the global financial meltdown isn't even half of the global mess. Every day the world races faster into climate catastrophe because systematic capitalist greed demands its short-term profits be put ahead of averting this crisis.
There really is no point in Rudd lecturing the corporate rich to be a little less greedy, and wishing capitalism to be a little less extreme. At Green Left Weekly, we think it is far too late for that. Rudd provides no solution apart from lectures to corporate rich to stop doing what has made them so rich. His government continues policies that facilitate such gross wealth accumulation.
Instead of the world's governments wasting trillions of dollars in public funds to bail out banks and financial institutions, these bodies should be nationalised and run for the public good by popularly elected boards of management. The public's savings should be used to address the urgent challenges of climate change and social justice.
Let's invest trillions of dollars on renewable energy, housing the homeless and feeding the starving instead of bailing out the Gordon Geckos of the world.
If you agree with us that it's high time for some extreme do-goodism and some extreme long-term vision, please make a donation to GLW's fighting fund. We have raised $162,687 through donations and numerous fundraisers (see calendar on page 23 for details of the next fundraising event near you) but we need your help to raise the remaining $87,313 to make our $250,000 target by the end of this year.
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