Matt Stoller: The Egyptian Labor Uprising Against Rubinites

[Hannah Bell]

Via Wikileaks, we learned that the son of the former President of Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, had an interesting conversation in 2009 with Senator Joe Lieberman on the banking crisis. Gamal is a key figure in the forces buffeting Egypt, global forces of labor arbitrage, torture, and financial corruption. Gamal believed that the bailouts of the banks weren’t big enough – “you need to inject even more money into the system than you have”. Gamal, a former investment banker trained at Bank of America, helped craft Egypt’s industrial policy earlier in the decade.

http://www.meforum.org/2063/gamal-mubarak-we-need-audacious-leaders

Gamal: "Our purpose is to improve Egyptians’ living standards. We have a three-pronged plan to achieve this: favoring Egypt’s insertion into the global economy, reducing the state’s role in the economy, and giving the private sector greater freedom."

Deregulation, globalization, and privatization. This should be a familiar American recipe, commonly associated with former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chief Bob Rubin. That Rubinite rhetoric has been adopted by the children of strongmen shows the influence of Davos, the global annual conference of power brokers. Gamal, far more polished than his father, understood that the profit and power for his family lay in cooperating with foreign investors to squeeze labor as hard as possible. Mubarak’s inner circle aligned themselves with international investors and set themselves against domestic business and military interests.

This strategy was targeted at the global labor arbitrage going on since the 1970s, with Egypt’s role as one cheap labor in-sourcer. It’s no surprise that the Mubarak family has $40-70B stashed away in the global tax safe havens coddling the superrich. This wealth was extracted from the youth and women in Egypt’s new factories making low-cost goods for export. This is why the revolution was spearheaded by youth and women, and why the nationalist business elite, with its deep ties to the military, sided with the protesters. Mubarak’s inner circle aligned themselves with international investors and set themselves against domestic business and military interests.

...In other words, this is a revolt against Rubinite economic policy...

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/matt-stoller-the-egyptian-labor-uprising-against-rubinites.html


By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor for Rep. Alan Grayson. His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller

[Dawson Leery]

1. K/R

[dd2003]

2. barf

and to think I used to want to be an IB and even interviewed with some.....:argh:

[PufPuf23]

3. This is a failed economic policy that fails in theory and failed in practice but

not politics of the wealthy and powerful globalists.

The neo-liberal economic policy is based upon a continuation of unsustainable economic gains.

Over time, the beneficiaries have concentrated to too few; ecologically the strategy is very negative to the environment and humanity.

Population reduction and symbiosis with remaining wild are critical for humanity.

I think we should get there kindly and with good hearts rather than with violence, degradation, and social Darwinism.

[xchrom]

4. recommend

[malaise]

5. Neo-liberalism is in its death throes but

the political class keeps stealing our blood, our organs and our oxygen to keep a failed system going. When will humanity snap and pull the fugging plug?