>I hadn't meant to contribute to this discussion. But since you mention it,
>this comports better with my experience as a past and present government
>employee, except for the "intelligent, capable" part. The government is
>staffed with narrow-minded, short-sighted, incompetent idiots looking out
for
>near-term immediate personal or bureaucratic interests. [...] What I do
mean is that it betrays a
>complete failure to grasp the way the world works to suppose that there is
a
>cabal of brilliant people secretly planning a long range effective
campaign
>to further the class interests of the bourgeoisie.
Hmmmm .... having worked in the state sector too (though, admittedly, never actually having drawn a government paycheque), I'll both agree and (mostly) disagree with this one. There's a lot of idiots there, but there are a fair few brilliant people hanging round too, and they have all the important jobs.
Could I register as Exhibit A the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements? The BIS, in particular, has existed since 1931, and has consistently during that time worked almost exclusively to protect the interests of finance capital -- to set the rules of the game, to extract public subsidies when neeeded and, importantly, to resist any and all attempts to draw the regulation of the banking system into democratic control. I've seen people like Sir Nigel Wicks, or Ted Truman in action, and they act with a very clear perception of their and their employers' long term aims. And the BIS environment is one of a small club of central bankers, who share the same interests and meet regularly. It didn't take much of a leap of imagination for me to extrapolate from what went on at the secret meetings where I used to take the minutes to what went on at the meetings where no minutes were taken. There are two explanations of how it was that the IMF came to be the global policeman of neoliberalism, and one of them says that laissez-faire ideas just took over the staff as a sort of change in intellectual fashion. I prefer the other one.
>--jks (a federal employee)
dd (a poacher)
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