Het Neoliberale Geloof 451

June 4, 2009
Tomgram: Nick Turse, A Silent (and Violent) Epidemic
In a recent interview about our economic meltdown moment, economist James Galbraith spoke of widespread fraud in the financial system, pointing out that, in response to the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s, "there were 1,000 felony convictions for S&L insiders and about 700 or so went to jail. This is a bigger crisis, so you could easily be talking about a larger number of convictions."

Here's what's strange, though, at least for now: The only significant person to be brought up on charges, tried, and sent to jail, as far as I know, has been Ponzi-schemer par excellence Bernie Madoff. A few smaller-scale Ponzi-schemers are lined up behind him, possibly on their way to jail as well. As for the rest of the looters at the top of our semi-collapsed financial system, all of them, as far as I can tell, have either been allowed to go about their business or, at least, take their booty, including bonuses, and head for home to await better times.

Mind you, we live in a nation where the smallest things can land you in jail, and the prison population has "skyrocketed over the past quarter century." According to a report by the Pew Center on the States, the U.S. now has "5% of the world's population, but 25% percent of the world's prison inmates." One out of every 31 adult Americans, 7.3 million of us, is now in prison. Moreover, in these truly bad times, as the New York Times reports, "As states face huge budget shortfalls, prisons... are driving the spending increases." And yet this is the moment when, it seems, the government and the justice system have suddenly discovered the merits of mercy?

Nick Turse has, in these last months, focused on Americans who were shown no mercy. They lost jobs, pensions, homes, you name it. And some of them cracked under the strain. The economic body count is building, even if largely at the bottom of our society, not the top. In the third of his "rising body count" pieces, part of his Tough Times series for TomDispatch, he focuses on a world of extreme acts that are only intermittently recorded and noticed, and the desperate people who commit them. Think of his pieces as modest walls of both honor and shame for those broken by this crisis. Tom

Econocide
Body Count 3
By Nick Turse

After David B. Kellermann, the chief financial officer of beleaguered mortgage giant Freddie Mac, tied a noose and hanged himself in the basement of his Vienna, Virginia, home, the New York Times made it a front-page story. The stresses of the job in economic tough times, its reporters implied, had driven him to this extreme act.
Lees verder: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175079/nick_turse_a_silent_and_violent_epidemic