President-elect Barack Obama is dreaming in technicolour in thinking former federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker can pull the U.S. economy out of recession.
Mainstream media comment was all but non-existent when Obama appointed big-name Volcker to his economic recovery team.
The last time Volcker was appointed to a high profile investigation into economic malaise, he blew it. Handpicked by then UN secretary general Kofi Annan to clean up UN corruption, Volcker, gave a free ride to the robber barons who had lined their pockets in what has been called the biggest scandal in world history.
Promising an “independent inquiry”, and one that would be “thorough”, Volcker walked into the portfolio with undisclosed conflicts of interests before his job even began.
Volcker’s membership in David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, identified by
LizMichael.com as “a super-elite cabal of 300 international power brokers, who practically rule the world”, but does not publish its membership list on the Internet is well known.” (
www.canadafreepress, Dec. 6, 2004). “Lesser known is that Volcker has held a seat on Power Corporation’s international advisory board. Wealthy Canadian businessman and Power Corporation founder, Paul Desmarais Sr. is a major shareholder and director in TotalFinaElf, the largest oil corporation in France, which has held tens of billions of dollars in contracts with the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein.”
For the record, France was identified as one of the chief partners-in-corruption in the scandal. The Times of London calculated that French and Russian companies cashed in on $11-billion worth of business from oil-for-food between 1996 and 2003.
On the payroll as an attorney with Volcker’s Independent Inquiry Committee was Miranda Duncan. Duncan, who worked for UNICEF, is David Rockefeller’s granddaughter. It was Rockefeller’s money that built the UN’s Manhattan headquarters.
Volcker arrives on Obama’s new Economic Recovery Advisory board, which draws members from academia and business as well as from government, when statistics show that business investment in durable goods has fallen sharply; the housing market continues to fail and when consumer spending has contracted at its fastest rate for seven years.
“Sometimes policy-making in Washington can become a little bit too ingrown, a little bit too insular, said Obama. “The walls of the echo chamber can sometimes keep out fresh voices and new ways of thinking.”
But there is no record that shows that Volcker has any “new ways of thinking”.
Not only were most of the robber barons in oil-for-food never brought to justice, spending at the UN has continued to spiral out of control.
Renovations at the UN’s New York headquarters is up to $1.9 billion and still counting.
In the middle of recession, a $23 million ceiling painting was unveiled at the UN on Nov. 18. Spanish abstract artist Miquel Barcelo created the work, a 16,000-square-foot painting with hundreds of dangling aluminum icicle shapes.
In spite of his sterling reputation as former Federal Reserve Chairman, Volcker seems to facilitate the role of today’s robber barons in the corridors of power.
“Robber baron is a term that revived in the the 19th century in the United States as a reference to businessmen and bankers who dominated their respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of pursuing various anti-competitive or unfair business practices,” according to (econ161.berkeley.edu). “The term may now be used in relation to any businessman or banker who is perceived to have used questionable business practices or scams in order to become powerful or wealthy (placing them in power of everything having controlled most business affairs.)”
No one paid closer attention to the wanton corruption in oil-for-food than award-winning journalist Claudia Rosett.
“Even in the reports of the supposedly tell-all 2004-2005 UN-authorized inquiry into Oil-For-Food, led by Paul Volcker, it is hard in many places to draw a line between expose and coverup,” Rosett wrote on Nov. 29. “One of my favorite examples is Volcker’s first interim report, released in February 2005, in which his committee described disturbing behavior by the person who was then deputy secretary general, Louise Frechette, referring to her 12 times without once mentioning her name.”
This is the UN update on the unnamed Frechette: “As former deputy secretary general to the UN, she, along with 2006 recipient Carolyn McAskie, are two of three Canadian women (Louise Arbour is the third) who have reached the upper echelon of the UN Administration.” (ottawacitizen.com, Nov. 26, 2008). “Louise Frechette was a “fitting choice” for the 2008 UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women) Canada Award for the Advancement of Women.”
As Rosett notes, “When Volcker finished his inquiry, instead of heeding congressional urgings to release the underlying evidence, he turned the archive over to the black hole of the UN’s own legal department.
This not only ensured that many lingering questions would remain unanswered; it obscured the matter of whether they had ever been asked in the first place.”
Nothing has changed at the United Nations before or after Paul Volcker.
Meanwhile the only person talking about change is President-elect Barack Obama and his bound to be disillusioned supporters. The French must have been thinking about him when they concluded: “The more things change the more they remain the same.”
Pelosi: "car czar" could be named this week, Volcker eyed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A presidentially appointed "car czar" to oversee the restructuring of struggling U.S. automakers could be named as soon as this week if Congress approves an industry bailout, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview aired on Tuesday.
Pelosi told NBC's "Today Show" that she favored former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, recently appointed by President-elect Barack Obama as his top adviser on steering the economy out of recession, to oversee restructuring of the industry.
Democrats and the White House are negotiating a bailout package of up to $15 billion in loans to rescue the Detroit Three companies. The final plan must be approved by Congress.
More...Judi McLeod——
Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
