Britannia Radio

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Was Tying to Torpedo the Dollar 

By Mike Whitney

May 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" ---- -It's all about perception management. The media is trying to dig up as much dirt as they can on Dominique Strauss-Kahn so they can hang the man before he ever sees the inside of a courthouse. It reminds me of the Terry Schiavo case, where devoted-husband Michael was pegged as an insensitive slimeball for carrying out the explicit wishes of his brain-dead wife. Do you remember how the media conducted their disgraceful 24 hour-a-day Blitzkrieg with the endless coverage of weepy Christian fanatics on the front lawn of the hospital while Hannity, Limbaugh and O' Reilly fired away with their sanctimonious claptrap?

And now you're telling me that that same media is just "doing their job?"

Give me a break.

Whoever wants to nail IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has really pulled out all the stops. Their agents have been rummaging through diaries, hotel registries, phone records, yearbooks, yada, yada, yada. The UK Telegraph even paid a visit to a high-priced DC knocking shop to get a little dirt from Madame Botox; whatever it takes to make a randy banker look like the South Hill rapist. And they're doing a pretty good job, too. The cops have made sure that the "Great Seducer" always appears handcuffed and dressed in a "pervie" raincoat with 3-days stubble before they parade him in front of the media. On Wednesday--more grist for the mill--they released his mug-shot, an unflattering, deadpan photo that makes him look like Jack-the-Ripper. Was that the intention?

And, that's not the half of it. The Big Money is exhuming every woman he's ever had contact with for the last 30 years hoping they can glean some damning tidbit of information that will convince the doubters that beneath that sophisticated manner and $25,000 suit lurks a closet Bluebeard ready to snap up your daughters and defile your wives. Next thing you know, they'll be trotting out Paula Jones and Tanya Harding claiming they spent a torrid night with the Marquis de Kahn in a trailerpark outside Winamucca.

Where does it stop? Or does it stop? Are we in for another year-long Clinton-Lewinski feeding frenzy where everyday we hear more lurid details about the sexploits of people who don't really interest us at all?

Aren't you at all curious about who's behind this "lynching by media" scam? This is an all-out, no-holds-barred, steel-cage, take-down. The big boys save that kind of action for the worst offenders, that is, for the insiders who have broken "Omerta" or wandered off the reservation. I mean, they locked him up on Riker's Island without bail, for Chrissake. What does that tell you? Even Bernie Madoff was allowed to stay in his $7 million Park Avenue penthouse while he waited for trial, but not Straus-Kahn. Oh, no. He get's the royal treatment, even though he has no criminal record and nothing but the sketchy accusations of a chambermaid against him, he's carted off to the state slammer where he can mingle with hardened criminals while dining on corn flakes and Wonder Bread.

You call that justice? 

Can I tell you what this is all about? It's about the dollar. That's right. Strauss-Kahn was mounting an attack against the dollar and now the wrath of the Empire has descended on him like ton-of-bricks. Here's the scoop from the UK Telegraph:

"Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has called for a new world currency that would challenge the dominance of the dollar and protect against future financial instability.....

He suggested adding emerging market countries' currencies, such as the yuan, to a basket of currencies that the IMF administers could add stability to the global system....Strauss-Kahn saw a greater role for the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, (SDRs) which is currently composed of the dollar, sterling, euro and yen, over time but said it will take a great deal of international cooperation to make that work." ("International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn calls for new world currency", UK Telegraph)

So, Strauss-Kahn finds himself in the same crowd as Saddam Hussein and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, right? You may recall that

Saddam switched from dollars to euros about a year before the war. 12 months later Iraq was invaded, Saddam was hanged, and the dollar was restored to power. Gaddafi made a similar mistake when "he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar." ("Libya: All About Oil, or All About Central Banking?" Ellen Brown, Op-Ed News) Libya has since come under attack by US and NATO forces which have armed a motley group of dissidents, malcontents and terrorists to depose Gaddafi and reimpose dollar hegemony.

And now it's Strauss-Kahn's turn to get torn to shreds. And for good reason. After all, DSK actually poses a much greater threat to the dollar than either Saddam or Gaddafi because he's in the perfect position to shape policy and to persuade foreign heads of state that replacing the dollar is in their best interests. And that is precisely what he was doing; badmouthing the buck. Only he was too dense to figure out that the dollar is the US Mafia's mealticket, the main way that shifty banksters and corporate scalawags extort tribute from the poorest people on earth. Strauss-Kahn was rocking the boat, and now he's going to pay.

Here's a clip from CNN Money: 

"The International Monetary Fund issued a report Thursday on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

The IMF said Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, could help stabilize the global financial system....SDRs represent potential claims on the currencies of IMF members.....The IMF typically lends countries funds denominated in SDRs. While they are not a tangible currency, some economists argue that SDRs could be used as a less volatile alternative to the U.S. dollar.

"Over time, there may also be a role for the SDR to contribute to a more stable international monetary system," he said.

The goal is to have a reserve asset for central banks that better reflects the global economy since the dollar is vulnerable to swings in the domestic economy and changes in U.S. policy.

In addition to serving as a reserve currency, the IMF also proposed creating SDR-denominated bonds, which could reduce central banks' dependence on U.S. Treasuries. The Fund also suggested that certain assets, such as oil and gold, which are traded in U.S. dollars, could be priced using SDRs." ("IMF discusses dollar alternative", CNN Money)

Wow. So DSK was zeroing in on US Treasuries as well as the dollar? That's the whole shooting match.

So, what type of progress was he making in converting USDs to SDRs? According to Reuters: "The IMF general resources credit outstanding increased to 65.5 billion Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, ($104 billion) on May 12 from 6.0 billion SDRs at December 2007. The so-called new arrangement to borrow, which came into effect on April 1, increased the IMF's available lending resources to 269 billion SDRs on May 12 from 120 billion SDRs on March 31." (http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/05/17/idINIndia-57083920110517?type=economicNews)

Not a bad start for such an ambitious project. It looks like DSK's dream of dethroning the dollar as the de facto "international currency" was beginning to gain momentum. (Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said that the transition from dollars to SDRs "could be phased in within the next year.") But didn't he know that his actions would anger some very powerful and well-connected people?

Well, if he did; he never let on. In fact, he started mucking around in other stuff, too, like when he intervened on behalf of Irish taxpayers, trying to protect them at the expense of foreign bondholders. That's a big "No no" in banker's world. They keep a list of "people who count", and taxpayers are not on that list. Here's an excerpt from the Irish Times:

"Ireland’s Last Stand began less shambolically than you might expect. The IMF, which believes that lenders should pay for their stupidity before it has to reach into its pocket, presented the Irish with a plan to haircut €30 billion of unguaranteed bonds by two-thirds on average. (Irish finance minister) Lenihan was overjoyed, according to a source who was there, telling the IMF team: “You are Ireland’s salvation.”

The deal was torpedoed from an unexpected direction. At a conference call with the G7 finance ministers, the haircut was vetoed by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who, as his payment of $13 billion from government-owned AIG to Goldman Sachs showed, believes that bankers take priority over taxpayers. The only one to speak up for the Irish was UK chancellor George Osborne, but Geithner, as always, got his way. An instructive, if painful, lesson in the extent of US soft power, and in who our friends really are.

The negotiations went downhill from there. On one side was the European Central Bank, unabashedly representing Ireland’s creditors and insisting on full repayment of bank bonds. On the other was the IMF, arguing that Irish taxpayers would be doing well to balance their government’s books, let alone repay the losses of private banks." ("Ireland's future depends on breaking free from bailout", Morgan Kelly, Irish Times)

So, Strauss-Kahn stuck up for Irish taxpayers over the banks, the bondholders, the ECB, and the US Treasury. Naturally, that made him persona non grata among the ruling throng.

And, there's more, too, because Strauss-Kahn's vision was not limited to currency alone, but involved broad structural changes to the IMF itself that would have reversed decades of neoliberal policies. DSK had settled on a new approach to policymaking; one that would abandon the worst elements of globalization and put greater emphasis on social cohesion, cooperation and multilateralism. Here's an excerpt from the speech titled "Human Development and Wealth Distribution" he gave in November 2010:

"....Adam Smith—one of the founders of modern economics—recognized clearly that a poor distribution of wealth could undermine the free market system, noting that: “The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful and…neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

This was over 250 years ago. In today’s world, these problems are magnified under the lens of globalization....globalization also had a dark side. Lurking behind it was a large and growing chasm between rich and poor—especially within countries. An inequitable distribution of wealth can wear down the social fabric. More unequal countries have worse social indicators, a poorer human development record, and higher degrees of economic insecurity and anxiety. In too many countries, inequality increased and real wages stagnated—failing to keep up with productivity—over the past few decades. Ominously, inequality in the United States was back at its pre-Great Depression levels on the eve of the crisis....

An immediate task is to end the scourge of unemployment....Progressive taxation can also promote equity through redistribution, and this should be encouraged....“Inequality is corrosive” ....“it rots societies from within…it illustrates and exacerbates the loss of social cohesion…the pathology of the age and the greatest threat to the health of any democracy.” ("Human Development and Wealth Distribution", Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF)

Can you believe it? DSK is lecturing bankers about redistribution? That's not what they want to hear. What they want to hear is why ripping off poor people actually makes the world a better place. DSK's speech just shows that he wasn't drinking the Koolaid anymore. He was becoming a nuisance and they needed to get rid of him.

Does that mean he didn't rape the woman who was in his hotel room?

Of course not. He could be guilty. But he deserves a fair trial, and someone's making damn sure he doesn't get one. 

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Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.  The Amerikan Police State Strides Forward By Paul Craig Roberts   May 18, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The International Monetary Fund’s director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested last Sunday in New York City on the allegation of an immigrant hotel maid that he attempted to rape her in his hotel room.  A New York judge has denied Strauss-Kahn bail on the grounds that he might flee to France.     President Bill Clinton survived his sexual escapades, because he was a servant to the system, not a threat.  But Strauss-Kahn, like former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, was a threat to the system, and, like Eliot Spitzer, Strass-Kahn has been  deleted from the power ranks.   Strauss-Kahn was the first IMF director in my lifetime, if memory serves, who disavowed the traditional IMF policy of imposing on the poor and ordinary people the cost of bailing out Wall Street and the Western banks. Strauss-Kahn said that regulation had to be reimposed on the greed-driven, fraud-prone financial sector, which, unregulated, destroyed the lives of ordinary people.  Strauss-Kahn listened to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of a handful of economists who has a social conscience.   Perhaps the most dangerous black mark in Strauss-Kahn’s book is that he was far ahead of America’s French puppet, President Sarkozy, in the upcoming French elections.  Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.    It is possible that Strauss-Kahn eliminated himself and saved Washington the trouble.  However, as a well-travelled person who has often stayed in New York hotels and in hotels in cities around the world, I have never experienced a maid entering unannounced into my room, much less when I was in the shower.     In the  spun story, Strauss-Kahn is portrayed as so deprived of sex that he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Anyone who ever served on the staff of a powerful public figure knows that this is unlikely. On a senator’s staff on which I served, there were two aides whose job was to make certain that no woman, with the exception of his wife, was ever alone with the senator. This was done to protect the senator both from female power groupies, who lust after celebrities and powerful men, and from women sent by a rival on missions to compromise an opponent.  A powerful man such as Strauss-Kahn would not have been starved for women, and as a multi-millionaire he could certainly afford to make his own discreet arrangements.   As Henry Kissinger said, “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” In politics, sex is handed out as favors and payoffs, and it is used as a honey trap. Some Americans will remember that Senator Packwood’s long career (1969-1995) was destroyed by a female lobbyist, suspected, according to rumors, of sexual conquests of Senators, who charged that Packwood propositioned her in his office.  Perhaps what inspired the charge was that Packwood was in the way of her employer’s legislative agenda.   Even those who exercise care can be framed by allegations of an event to which there are no witnesses.  On May 16 the British Daily Mail reported that prior to Strauss-Kahn’s fateful departure for New York, the French newspaper, Liberation,published comments he made while discussing his plans to challenge Sarkozy for the presidency of France. Strauss-Kahn said that as he was the clear favorite to beat Sarkozy, he would be subjected to a smear campaign by Sarkozy and his interior minister, Glaude Gueant.  Strauss-Kahn predicted that a woman would be offered between 500,000 and 1,000,000 euros (more than $1,000,000) to make up a story that he raped her.    The Daily Mail reports that Strauss-Kahn’s suspicions are supported by the fact that the first person to break the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest was an activist in Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party – who apparently knew about the scandal before it happened.  Jonathan Pinet, a politics student, tweeted the news just before the New York Police Department made it public, although he said that he simply had a ‘friend’ working at the Sofitel where the attack was said to have happened.   The first person to re-tweet Mr Pinet was Arnaud Dassier, a spin doctor who had previously publicised details of multi-millionaire Strauss-Kahn’s luxurious lifestyle in a bid to dent his left wing credentials. Strauss-Kahn could just as easily been set up by rivals inside the IMF, as well as by rivals within the French political establishment. Michelle Sabban, a senior councillor for the greater Paris region and a Strauss-Kahn loyalist said: ‘I am convinced it is an international conspiracy.’ She added: ‘It's the IMF they wanted to decapitate, not so much the Socialist primary candidate. ‘It's not like him. Everyone knows that his weakness is seduction, women. That's how they got him.’ Even some of Strauss-Kahn’s rivals said they could not believe the news. ‘It is totally hallucinatory,’ said centrist Dominique Paille.  ‘If it is true, this would be a historic moment, but in the negative sense, for French political life. I hope that everyone respects the presumption of innocence. I cannot manage to believe this affair.’ And Henri de Raincourt, minister for overseas co-operation in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, added: ‘We cannot rule out the thought of a trap.’    Michelle Sabban is on to something when she says the IMF was the target.  Strauss-Kahn is the first IMF director who is not lined up on the side of the rich against the poor. Strauss-Kahn’s suspicions were of Sarkozy, but Wall Street and the US government also had strong reasons to eliminate him. Wall Street is terrified by the prospect of regulation, and Washington was embarrassed by the recent IMF report that China’s economy would surpass the US economy within five years.  An international conspiracy is not out of the question.   Indeed, the plot is unfolding as a conspiracy. Authorities have produced a French woman who claims she was a near rape victim of Strauss-Kahn a decade ago.  It would be interesting to know whether this allegation is the result of a threat or a bribe.  As in the case of Julian Assange, there are now two women to accuse Strauss-Kahn.  Once the prosecutors get the odds of two females against one male, they win in the media.   It has not been revealed how the authorities knew Strauss-Kahn was on a flight to France. However, by arresting him aboard his scheduled flight just as it was to depart, the authorities created the image of a man fleeing from a crime.   The way Amerikan justice (sic) works is that prosecutors in about 96 percent of the cases get a plea bargain.  US prosecutors are permitted by judges and the public to pay for testimony against the defendant and to put sufficient pressure on innocent defendants to coerce them into making a guilty plea in exchange for lesser charges and a lighter sentence.  Unless the hotel maid has a spell of bad conscience and admits she was paid to lie, or gets cold feet about perjuring herself, Strauss-Kahn is likely to find that Amerikan criminal justice (sic) is organized to produce conviction regardless of innocence or guilt.   On May 16, the day following Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, the US Supreme Court threw its weight behind the Amerikan police state by destroying the remains of the Fourth Amendment with an 8-1 ruling that, the U.S. Constitution notwithstanding, Amerika’s  police do not need warrants to invade homes and search persons.    This ruling is more evidence that every American is regarded as a potential enemy of the state, not only by Airport Security but also by the high muckety-mucks in Washington. The conservatives’ “war on crime” has created a police state, and conservatives, who originally stood for limited government and civil liberty,  are euphoric over the expanded and unaccountable powers that a conservative Supreme Court has handed to the police.    On the same day the federal government reached the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, which forced the Treasury to “borrow” money from federal employee pensions in order to continue funding Amerika’s illegal wars and crimes against humanity. The breached debt ceiling serves as an appropriate marker for a country that has squandered its constitutional heritage and has arrived at moral as well as fiscal bankruptcy. UPDATE -  In the several hours since I wrote this article, authorities have announced that Strauss-Kahn, who was refused bail on specious grounds, has been put on suicide watch. Why announce it unless it serves an agenda? From the beginning every statement and action of the authorities is designed to convey the impression of guilt. Is putting Strauss-Kahn on suicide watch a way to paint a picture of a person who can't face the public humiliation of his crime? Is it a way to use the humiliation of constant interruption to break down his character and resolve? Or might it be to plant the idea that should he expire in prison, suicide is the explanation?