The Vultures

Kat, a regular reader (and practically the official Newshog researcher) has sent me the link to Greg Palast's latest over at Democracy Now. It concerns “Vulture fund” companies who buy up the debt of poor countries at cheap prices, and then demand payments much higher than the original amount of the debt, often taking poor countries to court when they cannot afford to repay. The biggest "vulture" in the US, according to Palast, is:

Paul Singer...[who] is the number one donor to George Bush at the moment, has given over a million-and-a-half dollars in the last campaign. He’s Rudy Giuliani's chief fundraiser, raising $15 million now for his presidential campaign. He's a billionaire. He controls a $7 billion fund, and he's obviously very close with the Bush administration, which is crucial, absolutely crucial to his making these profits.

Why is it crucial?

Under US law, the President of the United States has the absolute power to stop any vulture fund from collecting money from a poor nation, under the US Constitution. It’s called the power of comity. The African nations are pleading with George Bush to stop his big donors from collecting. Now, what's happening is, is that in the State of the Union, George Bush said we have to give debt relief to the poorest nations. The US taxpayers are putting up more than a billion dollars to write off the debts of the African nations, but what Bush isn't saying is that he is then allowing that money to be captured by his biggest donors, like Paul Singer, so that the money for debt relief is not going to the African nations, where they're desperately in need for, you know, funding for medicine for AIDS, for education, which is what it's earmarked for. These guys are actually going into US courts and saying, “Give us the money.” Now, George Bush, again, has the absolute power, and the judges are waiting for him to write a note. They're saying, “George Bush can ask us to dismiss this case in one minute, but we need something in writing from the White House.”

It ends up making the vultures billions while these poor nations, like Zambia, lose the money they should have saved when the US taxpayer foots the bill to forgive their debt. The effects:

Horrendous, because this $40 million for Zambia was specifically earmarked for fighting AIDS, where there's a 20% HIV/AIDS rate among adults in Zambia, and for education. 300,000 school kids are not going to be able to go to school because of this, unless Bush steps in. What's horrendous is the kind of con that's going on. You have a president of the United States standing up in front of Congress, saying give us money, give us billions to write off, in the State of the Union. He puts it in the budget, without anyone saying that, in fact, it's not getting to Africa, it's going to his biggest donors, who are short-stopping it by interjecting themselves and buying up the right to collect and then using the US courts and the British courts. Bush can put a stop to it tomorrow morning. The problem is, is that he's not been responding.

Go read the whole transcript and watch the documentary...you need your blood-pressure pumped up on a cold day to keep warm.

Kat writes "The President of the U.S. has the power to stop this with one stroke of his pen, but he ain't gonna -- because they're his top campaign contributors -- and for Giuliani's campaign too...What the f**k is wrong with these moral degenerates??? 'Despicable' doesn't even begin to describe the loathing I feel for these people. This is the sort of human behavior that gives even David Ickes' "Reptilian aliens" a bad name!" And I cannot disagree with her asssessment.