Defaulting banks - where will it stop?

[David Guyatt]

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, given the increasingly global connections of our banks and other multinational corporations, the issue of how you remedy a crisis in one country. For instance, I heard last night on C-SPAN the hearing that Congressman Kucinich had of the bailout. He had an oversight hearing yesterday. And he questioned the Treasury Department over the fact that the bailout money has been going to banks that, in some cases, are then using the bailout money to invest overseas, a $6 billion—

MICHAEL PARENTI: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —investment in Dubai, an $8 billion investment in a company in China—

MICHAEL PARENTI: China, I was just going to say, right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —I think by Bank of America, so that—and Kucinich was asking, what are we doing giving money to bailing out banks who say they can’t lend in the United States, but then they use the money in investments abroad? How do you reconcile the global connections of these companies with the need in one particular country to stem the financial crisis?

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, given the increasingly global connections of our banks and other multinational corporations, the issue of how you remedy a crisis in one country. For instance, I heard last night on C-SPAN the hearing that Congressman Kucinich had of the bailout. He had an oversight hearing yesterday. And he questioned the Treasury Department over the fact that the bailout money has been going to banks that, in some cases, are then using the bailout money to invest overseas, a $6 billion—

MICHAEL PARENTI: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —investment in Dubai, an $8 billion investment in a company in China—

MICHAEL PARENTI: China, I was just going to say, right.

What does this tell you, if anything? To me it suggests the focus is moving to the southern hemisphere and the west is being completely drained of its wealth and assets to achieve a new southern alignment.

Could it that our northern climes are so thoroughly trashed that they are beyond salvage and that those in the know are aware of this? This is highy speculative and CT obviously, but I do wonder sometimes.

Prince Charles in a speech given in Brazil yesterday warned of the catastrophe that awaits the world if it doesn’t tackle climate change. He warned that

We have less than 100 months to alter our behaviour before we risk catastrophic climate change, and the unimaginable horrors that this would bring.

Where did he get 100 months from? That seems far too precise a figure to have been simply grabbed from thin air. There must be a believable and influential study (or studies?) that he is quoting from.