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‘End-game’ conspiracy or business as usual?

by Systemic Disorder
The problem isn’t greedy bankers, the problem is the system that enables the greedy bankers.
The so-called “end-game” memo authored by Timothy Geithner and recently brought to light by investigative journalist Greg Palast certainly is interesting, but does not “prove” that a secret cabal set up the world for a financial collapse. The present-day neoliberal misery has far deeper roots than a handful of officials, no matter how odious.

Last week, a memo written by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner in 1997, when he was assistant secretary for international affairs in the U.S. Treasury Department, was published by Mr. Palast. The memo asked Lawrence Summers to directly call the chief executive officers of five key players in the financial industry — Bank of America, Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch — to discuss “the end-game of [World Trade Organization] financial services regulations.”

In his accompanying story, Mr. Palast gets a little hyperbolic:

“When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn’t believe it. The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet.” 

It isn’t a secret that the finance ministries of governments in the world’s advanced capitalist countries are captives of the global finance industry, nor that the U.S. Treasury Department is Wall Street’s personal branch of government. It’s no secret that industrialists and financiers hold decisive influence over governments. The system is called capitalism.

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