I was reading parts of Mike Ruppert's "Crossing the Rubicon" and
wanted to post this nice little paragraph about Mr Al Gore's
involvement in the rape and pillage of the former Soviet empire.
Before reading remember that Clinton and Al Gore and most Democrats
adn Republicans are not "liberal" or "conservative", but are
NeoLiberal (wiki definition below of NeoLiberal). Some have
speculated that the real goal of the elite and their paid puppet
politicians are to create debt, both national and private, so as to
push an economic collapse greater than the Great Depression while
before their companies reinvest in China, UAE (Halliburton just
moved there) and other potential safe economic holdouts. Then after
the economic crash these Corporatists will buy out your property,
because most people would rather eat than own property if there is
mass starvation. Here is an example of the all humanitarian
Democrat when they are in positions of power:


"Though the seeds had been planted by the outgoing first Bush
administration, the US assistance program to facilitate Russia's
transition to capitalism took off under the new Clinton
administration in 1993. A task force headed by Vice President Al
Gore, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Deputy Secretary of State
Strobe Talbot and involving exclusive US Treasury contracts with
Goldman Sachs, the Harvard Institute for International Development,
the IMF, and the World Bank worked in partnership with the
government of Boris Yeltsin to remake the Russian economy. What
happened was that Russia, in the words of Yeltsin himself, became
a "mafiocracy" and was looted of more than $500 billion in assets;
its economy was ruined, its currency destroyed, its population
rendered desperate, and its ability to support a world-class
military establishment smashed."

from Crossing the Rubicon (page 88) by Mike Ruppert and:

"Journalist Anne Williamson was for many years a leading expert on
Russian and Soviet affairs, spoke to Congress in 1999, and that
record is available. She pulled no punches in describing the rape of
a country and of a people who had already been victimized by seven
decades of Soviet communism:

And there is no mistake as to who the victims are, i.e., Western,
principally US, taxpayers and Russian citizens whose national legacy
was stolen only to be squandered and/or invested in Western real
estate and equities markets.

Western assistance, IMF lending, and the targeted division of
national assets are what provided Boris Yeltsin the initial
wherewithal to purchase his constituency of ex-Komsomol [Communist
Youth League, bank chiefs, who were given the freedom and the
mechanisms to plunder their own country in tandem with a resurgent
and more economically competent criminal class. The new elite
learned everything about the confiscation of wealth, but nothing
about its creation."

Crossing the Rubicon (continued from page 88) by Mike Ruppert


NeoLiberal from Wikipedia:

Neoliberalism refers to a political movement that espouses economic
liberalism as a means of promoting economic development and securing
political liberty. The movement is sometimes described as an effort
to revert to the economic policies of the 18th and 19th centuries
classical liberalism.[1] Strictly in the context of English-language
usage the term is an abbreviation of "neoclassical liberalism",
since in other languages liberalism has more or less retained its
classical meaning.

Overview
Neoliberalism refers to a historically-specific reemergence of
economic liberalism's influence among economic scholars and policy-
makers during the 1970s and through at least the late-1990s, and
possibly into the present (its continuity is a matter of dispute).
In many respects, the term is used to denote a group of neoclassical-
influenced economic theories, right-wing libertarian political
philosophies, and political rhetoric that portrayed government
control over the economy as inefficient, corrupt or otherwise
undesirable. Neoliberalism is not a unified economic theory or
political philosophy -- it is a label denoting an apparent shift in
social-scientific and political sentiments that manifested
themselves in theories and political platforms supporting a reform
of largely centralized postwar economic institutions in favor of
decentralized ones -- and few supporters of neoliberal policies use
the word itself. Neoliberal arguments gained a great deal of
currency after the Stagflation Crisis of the 1970s, the Developing
World Debt Crisis of the 1980s (which primarily affected Latin
America but was felt elsewhere[2]),and the Soviet Collapse of the
early-1990s.


Policies Advanced by Neoliberalism
The definitive statement of the concrete policies advocated by
neoliberalism is often taken to be John Williamson's[3] "Washington
Consensus" , a list of policy proposals that appeared to have gained
consensus approval among the Washington-based international economic
organizations (like the IMF and World Bank). These reforms are
described by Dani Rodrik[4] as:

Fiscal rectitude, meaning that governments would cut expenditures
and/or raise taxes to maintain a budget surplus
Competitive exchange rates, whereby governments would accept market-
determined exchange rates, as opposed to implemented government-
fixed exchange rates, as had prevailed under the Bretton Woods
System
Free Trade, which means the selected removal of trade barriers, like
tariffs, subsidies, and regulatory trade barriers
Privatization, which means the transfer of previously-public-owned
enterprises, goods, and services to the private sector.
Undistorted Market Prices, meaning that governments would
selectively refrain from policies that would alter market prices.
Limited Intervention, which the exception of intervention designed
to promote exports, some kinds of education or infrastructural
development.[5]


Before Neoliberalism
With few exceptions, the economies of most European countries during
Middle Ages were under a considerable degree of state control due to
adherence to Mercantilism ideas and the predominance of the
Feudalism system.

With the coming of the Enlightenment, this system came increasingly
under attack. Arguments that stress the economic benefits of
unfettered markets first began to appear with Adam Smith's (1776)
Wealth of Nations and David Hume's writings on commerce.

These ideas served to guide the policies of governments throughout
much of the 19th century. Notwithstanding the broad intellectual and
popular support for laissez-faire capitalism that existed during
that time, statist ideas slowly began to regain a following amongst
the intellectuals that had rejected them during the early
Enlightenment. While state interventionism increased towards the end
of the 19th century, the Progressive Era saw an accelerated movement
to re-institutionalize government controls over the economy.

With an intellectual and political foundation in place, the onset of
the Great Depression and the rapid industrialization of the Soviet
Union increased support support for government economic control as a
means of securing rapid industrialization.[6] By the end of World
War II, many countries decided to expand their governments
dramatically.[1]

Across much of the world, the economics of John Maynard Keynes,
which sought to formulate the means by which governments could
stabilize and fine-tune free markets, became a highly-influential
ideology. Within the developing world, several developments - among
them decolonization, a desire for national independence and the
destruction of the pre-war global economy[7], and the view that
countries could not effectively industrialize under free market
systems (e.g., the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis) - encouraged economic
policies that were influenced by communist, socialist and import
substitution precepts.


An Economic Golden Age
The rise of government intervention in the 1950s and 1960s brought
an exceptional economic prosperity, in which economic growth was
generally high, inflation was contained[8], and economic
distribution was comparatively equalized[9].


The System Collapses
By the late-1960s, however, the corporatist system that had been
instituted during the 1930s showed strains. Some of these strains
can be located in the international financial system.[10][11], and
culminated in the dissolution of the Bretton Woods system, which
some argue had set the stage for the Stagflation crisis that would
discredit Keynesianism in the English-speaking world. In addition,
some argue that the postwar economic system was premised on a
society that excluded women and minorities from economic
opportunities, and the political and economic integration won by
these groups strained the postwar system.[12]


Neoliberalism's Monetarist Foundation
Neoliberalism is associated with Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian
School of economics, economics departments such as that at the
University of Chicago (and such professors as Milton Friedman and
Arnold Harberger), and international organizations such as the
International Monetary Fund and The World Bank. None of these
parties uses the typically-critical label "neoliberal"; but some
have identified with monetarism. Neoliberalism was founded in the
movement away from the Keynesian economics that were dominant
immediately after World War II in such countries as the U.S. and
England, although it has spread to countries without Keynesian
policies, as disparate as Sweden, South Africa, Argentina, and
Russia. The philosophy promotes a "liberalization" of capital
markets (thus called "neoliberal reform").


A Critical Approach to Neoliberalism
"The standard neoliberal policy package includes cutting back on
taxes and government social spending; eliminating tariffs and other
barriers to free trade; reducing regulations of labor markets,
financial markets, and the environment; and focusing macroeconomic
policies on controlling inflation rather than stimulating the growth
of jobs," reports economist Robert Pollin (2003).[13] Arising out of
a rejection of the class compromises embedded in previous liberal
political-economic policies, including Keynesian and Active Labour
Market Policies (ALMPs), neoliberal theory, institutions, policies,
and practices are not regarded as politically neutral by their
opponents.

Economists remind us that free markets are theoretically efficient,
not fair,[14] and this distinction is a foundation of the critique
of neoliberalism. Opponents critique neoliberalism's effects on
wages, working class institutions, inequality, social mobility,
working class well-being, health, the environment, and democracy.
Notable opponents to neoliberalism in theory or practice include
economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Robert Pollin,[15]
linguist Noam Chomsky,[16] geographer David Harvey,[17] the anti-
globalization movement, including ATTAC ((Association pour la
Taxation des Transactions pour l'Aide aux Citoyens, or the
Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid
of Citizens, which began by agitating for the Tobin Tax on foreign
exchange transactions) in Europe. The economists and policy analysts
at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) offer
progressive policy alternatives to neoliberal policies. In addition,
a significant opposition to neoliberalism has grown in Latin
America, a target of neoliberal policies. Prominent Latin American
opponents include the Zapatista rebellion, and the governments of
Venezuela, and Cuba.

Critics of neoliberalism view neoliberalism as both an economic and
political project aimed at reconfiguring class relations in
societies. Not only have many core countries' labor aristocracy
families been forced to have more than one income-earner, but
workers have been so heavily disciplined by capital and the
capitalist state that, as Alan Greenspan said, they
are "traumatized". [18] Daniel Brook's "The Trap: Selling Out to
Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America" (2007) describes the anti-
democratic political effect of decreased middle class welfare.[19]
The massive U.S. military-industrial complex adds an extra layer of
repression to working class "traumatization," according to David
Harvey (2005), making resistance seem unfeasible to most workers.
A "traumatized" working class allows the capitalist class absolute
reign, which Harvey claims--citing the economic crises of 1873 and
the 1920s--to be disastrous for economies around the globe, states,
and working class people; though, he points out, on average
capitalists were not negatively impacted by these crises.[20]

Critics of neoliberalism sometimes refer to it as the "American
Model", which they find promotes low wages and high inequality.[21]
According to the economists Howell and Diallo (2007), neoliberal
policies have contributed to a U.S. economy in which 30% of workers
earn "low wages" (less than two-thirds the median wage for full-time
workers), and 35% of the labor force is "underemployed"; only 40% of
the working age population in the U.S. is considered adequately
employed. The Center for Economic Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean
Baker (2006) has shown that the driving force behind rising
inequality in the United States has been a series of deliberate,
neoliberal policy choices including anti-inflationary bias, anti-
unionism, and profiteering in the health industry.[22] However,
countries have applied neoliberal policies at varying levels of
intensity; for example, the OECD has calculated that only 6% of
Swedish workers are beset with low wages.[23] John Schmitt and Ben
Zipperer (2006) of the CEPR have analyzed the effects of intensive
Anglo-American neoliberal policies in comparison to continental
European neoliberalism, concluding "The U.S. economic and social
model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion,
including high levels of income inequality, high relative and
absolute poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor
health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration. At the
same time, the available evidence provides little support for the
view that U.S.-style labor-market flexibility dramatically improves
labor-market outcomes. Despite popular prejudices to the contrary,
the U.S. economy consistently affords a lower level of economic
mobility" than all the continental European countries for which data
is available.[24]

Critics of neoliberalism examine the political foundations of the
neoliberal project as well as its economic foundations. One of the
most famous moments in neoliberal political history occurred when
then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan's advisors had him deregulate the
thrift industry. This was promoted with the claim that a gigantic
bonanza of growth and investment was sure to follow. Reagan signed
the deregulation bill in 1982, grinning, "All in all, I think we've
hit the jackpot." The best reckoning is that deregulation bomb
redistributed a trillion dollars from the public upward to
capitalists' private holdings.[25] While Reagan and the United
Kingdom's Margaret Thatcher laid the groundwork for what Alan
Greenspan called working class "traumatization", through eliminating
collective assets by sales to the private sector, enacting policies
to diminish labor unions, and promoting militarization, other
politicians have steadily continued the neoliberal tradition.

According to Pollin (2003), neoliberalism under the U.S. Clinton
administration--steered by Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin-- was the
temporary and unstable policy inducement of economic growth via
government-supported financial and housing market speculation, with
low unemployment, but also with low inflation. This unusual
coincidence was made possible by the disorganization and
dispossession of the American working class.[26] Berkeley
sociologist Angela Davis has argued and Princeton sociologist Bruce
Western has shown that the astonishingly high rate of incarceration
in the U.S. (1 out of every 37 American adults is in the prison
system), heavily promoted by the Clinton administration, is the
neoliberal U.S. policy tool for keeping unemployment statistics low,
and stimulating economic growth through maintaining a contemporary
slave population within the U.S. and promoting prison construction
and militarized policing.[27]

Harvey (2005) sums up neoliberalism as a global capitalist class
power restoration project. Neoliberalism, he explains, is a theory
of political-economic practices that dedicates the state to
championing private property rights, free markets, and free trade,
while deregulating business and privatizing collective assets.
Ideologically, neoliberals promote entrepreneurialism as the
normative source of human happiness. Harvey also considers
neoliberalization a form of capitalist "creative destruction", a
Schumpeterian concept.[28] This indicates that while neoliberalism
is a critical concept with a critique of capitalist class relations,
it is not strictly a Marxist concept; the Marxist term for
neoliberalism is "primitive accumulation."

Harvey (2000) observes that neoliberalism has become hegemonic world-
wide, sometimes by coercion. Opponents of neoliberalism argue that
neoliberalism is the implementation of global capitalism through
government/military interventionism to protect the interests of
multinational corporations. Even neoliberal proponent Thomas
Friedman has argued approvingly, "The hidden hand of the market will
never work without a hidden fist."[29] In its commitment to
belligerent capitalism, neoliberalism is linked to neoconservatism.


The State-centric Approach to Neoliberalism
The state-centric approach to neoliberalism concurs with the
critical approach that neoliberal ideas are really just laissez-
faire liberal prescriptions that overthrew Keynesianism. State-
centric theorists hold that neoliberalism is "the attempt to reduce
the role of the state in the market through tax cuts, decreases in
social spending, deregulation, and privatization."[30] However, the
state-centric approach argues that state actors were the political
entrepreneurs who formulated neoliberalism--rather than, as critics
of neoliberalism would claim, capitalist political organizations,
and economists and economic departments, think tanks, and
politicians all supported by class-conscious capitalists. State-
centric theorists argue that neoliberalism spread because it fit the
voters' preferences best; they disagree in this with the critical
approach, which maintains that neoliberal framing and policies were
propagated by well-heeled, highly organized political machines that
insisted to the public, "There is no alternative". State-centric
sociologist Monica Prasad (2006) futher argues that neoliberalism
became dominant where labor institutions were too strong and
confrontative; she claims that labor organizations and the welfare
state were the strongest in the U.S. and England.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism