When a . . . government desires to borrow money it must divest itself for the time being of all sovereign powers, and come before its subjects as a private corporation. It must bargain with those who have money to lend, and satisfy them as to questions of payment and security. . . . The broad theory of constitutional liberty is that the people have the right to govern themselves; but the historical fact is that, in the attempt to realize this theory, the actual control of public affairs has fallen into the hands of those who possess property. It follows from this that when property-owners lend to the government, they lend to a corporation controlled by themselves.

Henry Carter Adams, Public Debts: An Essay in the Science of Finance (New York: D. Appleton, 1887), pp. 7, 9

That’s as clear as one can state the matter! Sovereignty is undermined by ‘sovereign debt.’ The newly-revealed financial crisis in Greece is the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. [One wonders how long it will be before that phrase is meaningless. When the glaciers are gone, there will be no more icebergs.] The added revelation that the crisis results from toxic concoctions by Goldman-Sachs brings the circle to a close: the big financiers, not content to enjoy the governments they control, scavenge for deeper interventions and more problematic arrangements to feed their unquenchable greed.

The suicide note left by Joe Stack before he crashed his little plane into the Austin, TX, building where the IRS maintained offices may not be polished writing, but, as Christopher Ketcham says, “The coherence is there for all to see who have eyes to see it.” Stack went ballistic trying to grapple with a malicious tax code designed to foster what some refer to as ‘socialism for the rich,’ but which is better termed fascism: the integration of the government and economy into a single institution of power. I wrote about that in “Corporate Personality and Human Commodification,” Rethinking MARXISM Volume 9, Number 2 (Summer 1996/97), pp. 99-113.