G-20 or more G-money

Mumia Abu-Jamal

From an Aug. 18 audio column which will be played at the Sept. 20 jobs march and rally for the unemployed in Pittsburgh.

As the G-20 gathers again, they assemble amidst the wreckage of their own creation.

Representatives of 20 of the alleged developed economies, they are instead representatives of casino capitalism: the use, misuse and grand theft of public wealth to fund the bonuses of financial pirates that have looted the treasury of billions.

A few months ago, as they gathered in London, the nations’ finance ministers talked about tax havens, but few had any real substantial solutions to the economic turmoil roiling in their own countries.

Much has been said about stimulus packages, and even about the enormous amounts of money being allocated for this purpose, but a modest amount has actually been spent, with the lion’s share being devoted to boosting the very banks and businesses that created this disaster.

And while banks and billionaires have been rewarded for their insatiable greed, average people, working people, families struggling in the worst economic environment since the 1930s, are on their own. Millions are jobless. Many are homeless. Many more are helpless.

And while they barely survive day after day, big buck bonuses are back on track at Goldman Sachs and other such entitles in the City.

Politicians, meanwhile, talk of a “jobless recovery.” If there are no jobs, who can really speak of a recovery? Wall Street is recovering—but are you?

Even the French conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said the economic disaster of last fall spelled the end to laissez-faire (French for ‘let it be’) economic theory. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are giving various stimulus packages to banks and businesses that look an awful lot like life support.

If this is free market, then slavery was free labor. Only a bold, unified people’s movement can put the people’s interests before that of big finance. It’s going to take protests—real protests—to break through this vampire’s bite on the wealth of nations.