The
passage of Gikas Hardouvelis [the new Greek Minister of Finance] from
Eurobank to the Presidential Office, back again to Eurobank and after
that to the Ministry of Finance, is one of the most characteristic
phenomenon of what the Anglo-Saxons call "revolving door".
The difference is that, in Greece, some people have stopped even to
preserve the pretexts
by Aris
Chatzistefanou
Tür ohne
Luftzug - A door without airstreams. This is the name used by the
German H. Bockhacker in 1881 to patent the construction of the known
revolving door. A few decades later, the specific mechanism which
allowed people to enter a high building without the powerful
airstreams, became a characteristic of the skyscrapers that started
to appear in the urban scenery of the American cities. In such a
skyscraper in Manhattan or Washington, the term "revolving door"
was used for the first time to describe the passage of big private
companies' executives to government positions and vice versa.
The term
will appear later in English dictionaries of the 70s, but the
phenomenon is as old as capitalism and urban democracy. The bankers
and big businessmen were entering European governments, without being
elected, during 20th century - they were either technocrats in the
Weimar Republic, or funders of Hitler who later became executives in
Hitler's governmental mechanism.
In modern
Germany, the example of Gerhard Schröder, who came out of the German
Chancellor "revolving door" and went to the offices of the
Russian natural gas company Gazprom, is considered one of the most
characteristic cases of conflict interests - together of course with
the "green" Minister of Foreign Affairs Joschka Fischer,
who after he left the Schröder administration, he was hired as a
consultant in the consortium for the construction of the natural gas
pipe Nabucco.
In the US,
the "revolving door" phenomenon is lost during the last two
centuries, but will take its current shape after the end of the WWII,
when the president Eisenhower placed Charles Erwin Wilson, CEO of
General Motors, in the position of Secretary of Defense (be careful,
not to confuse him with Charles Edward Wilson, which was the CEO of
General Electric and served Truman administration [!]).
The fact
that General Motors played a crucial role for the armament of nazi
Germany and specifically, for the military technology used for the
Blitzkrieg against Poland, seems that didn't bother the "General
of Victory" who opened the doors of the White House to the
representatives of the American automobile industry and when a
Congress committee asked Charles Erwin Wilson what would happen if
the national interest of the United States was opposite to that of
his company, he gave the historic answer "What's
good for General Motors is good
for the country".
Thankfully
for the "revolving doors" of the American multinationals,
Congress committees has stopped a long time ago to make such an
annoying questions when the Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney, became
CEO of Halliburton and returned as vice-president. In his first
governmental term, he offered to the company contracts of millions of
dollars to handle the fires in oil rigs in Kuwait, while when he
became vice-president, he literally delivered Iraq to Halliburton and
its partners. Similarly, the Chevron executive and later Secretary of
State, Condoleezza Rice, served her position in such a remarkable
success that the company gave her name to a tanker of 120,000 tonnes.
However,
the company that would literally occupy the American government was
the banking giant Goldman Sachs. From the four latest CEOs of the
bank, Henry Paulson became Secretary of the Treasury, Stephen
Friedman became a key consultant of president Bush for the economy,
and Robert Rubin was a key consultant of president Clinton while he
also became later Secretary of the Treasury. Even the head of the
Bush presidential office came from this bank. The European course of
the specific financial institution is quite known as Goldman Sachs
started to put its employees in the ECB, Commission and even in the
Italian presidential office, while no one can forget that the former
top executive of the Greek Public Debt Management Agency, Petros
Christodoulou, was also Goldman Sachs' employee prior to his term in
National Bank of Greece.
Many
governments voted for laws to treat corruption and conflict interests
that come from "revolving doors", like for example, the
fact that governmental officials are not allowed to take positions in
companies right after the end of their term, or the opposite. Japan
is trying to limit the Amakudari (descent from heaven) phenomenon,
that is, the unwritten law according to which all governmental
officials are hired immediately by big multinationals after the end
of their term.
The
only country that truly managed to break the "revolving doors"
is Greece with the Gikas Hardouvelis case. As George Vassalos, former
member of the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) had once explained
on Infowar, Hardouvelis entered Megaro Maximou, the official seat of
the Prime Minister of Greece, as consultant of Lucas Papademos
without being retired from his position in Latsis' Eurobank, as he
received a simple unpaid leave. Further than this, he was negotiating
with international banking lobby IIF, for the future of the Greek
banks, with Eurobank being member of this lobby.
Who
needs a "revolving door" in a presidential office or a
ministry when the companies and the banks are already inside?
Source:
To
summarize: The Greek government is just exchanging banking puppets in
key positions
Comments
Post a Comment