Our New Anahuac

A few days ago, less than a week, I believe, I was listening to a report on KPFT or NPR and they were discussing the Glass-Steagall Act, the act which essentially limited banks from taking major lending risks. In 1999 the act was repealed. This repeal is largely blamed for having caused the financial crisis the US is in today. I found this internet post which discusses much of what was in that radio report-the Glass-Steagall Act and its repeal.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall removed the legal prohibition on combinations between commercial banks on the one hand, and investment banks and other financial services companies on the other. Glass-Steagall’s strict rules originated in the U.S. government’s response to the Depression and reflected the learned experience of the severe dangers to consumers and the overall financial system of permitting giant financial institutions to combine commercial banking with other financial operations.

I thought a little bit about the meaning of the report, but the wheels of my mind started turning when I heard this little tidbit, which is also on the blog post:

Then, in 1998, in an act of corporate civil disobedience, Citicorp and Travelers Group announced they were merging. Such a combination of banking and insurance companies was illegal under the Bank Holding Company Act, but was excused due to a loophole that provided a two-year review period of proposed mergers. The merger was premised on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Citigroup’s co-chairs Sandy Weill and John Reed led a swarm of industry executives and lobbyists who trammeled the halls of Congress to make sure a deal was cut.

It painted the picture that the corporate chairs basically did whatever they wanted and that they would have to deal with a little matter of those people over on the hill later. Congress and federal law were basically reduced to a detail in the transaction, a detail that would have to be worked on later, but not something that could actually stop these two mammoths from doing whatever they wanted.

We have become accustomed to corporations essentially buying votes, and execs doing things under the table, but to hear that two major corporations openly disregarding federal law, premised on the thought that they would make Congress come around, is a new one on me. I know that I am twelve years late on this, but this was the first that I had heard of such an overt act of “civil disobedience” by major corps. It made me think hard about the future of corporations overtly disobeying laws. It was almost as if they did not recognize the authority of Congress.

That’s when it hit me. The government only has authority because we recognize this authority. No, that was not the epiphany.

I finally began to understand the decline of the Roman Catholic Church’s authority over sovereign nations. But more importantly, I began to understand why they ever had such control over nation-states in the first place, a concept which I understood academically, but could never relate to.

The Catholic Church could command countries simply because these countries, and their sovereigns, allowed The Church to do so. Period.

The Church was the recognized moral authority. Once nation states were no longer dependent or fearful of The Church, they began to disobey its orders, especially when such orders were no longer convenient.

Today, the recognized authority is the government.  The moral authority has changed from God to “the people,” at least in propaganda.

The Swiss Guard: Today's Ceremonial Guard at The Vatican. Their forces were not needed by England.

I began to see the corporate executives of Traveler’s and Citi as today’s version of Henry VIII. By the time Henry VIII disobeyed Rome by taking his new wife, Anne Boleyn, Rome seems to have become more dependent on nation-states than vice-versa. The pope could no longer offer the defense to the nation-states, after each country had organized its own military. Sure they had the Swiss Guards, but c’mon. The sovereigns, after all, could muster loyalty among the people without the consent of the pope. Basically, The Church had become superfluous, unnecessary, and maybe a little pesky to the captains of countries.

And it dawned on me that as these corporations become more powerful, bloggers in four or five hundred years, or maybe even one hundred, might wonder why on earth, corporations would have ever sought the approval of democratic governments in the first place.  It seems silly to us, in these days, that a sovereign might have to seek permission from a foreign pope for anything.  It might seems silly to our future generations that these theoretically democratic institutions supposedly by the people (however fraudulent it may be) might have had sway over private enterprise.

England had its own powerful, loyal constituents at the time it left The Church.  After all, it was the House of Commons who banned Rome from making decisions in England.  Today, corporations have their own powerful, loyal constituents.  They are called lobbyists and politicians.

At the time it left The Church, England has its own “national” army.  Today, corporations have their own “private” armies.  As of March, according to the Christian Science Monitor, 57 percent of the Pentagon’s Afghanistan personnel were private contractors.

Obviously, the members of Congress are far more dependent on corporations than are corporations dependent on Congress for anything.

Finally, as the sovereign and his apparatus controlled a great deal of the communication in England, so do the corporations control the vast majority of mass communication in the US.

It seems that it is only a matter of centuries before captains of industry get it into their heads that this whole rule by the people thing is too inconvenient, and perhaps, yes, a little pesky.  Sure, goverment will continue to exist, for those who wish to believe in it, but today’s US Marine might look as ceremonial to our future generations as the Swiss Guard do to us.  In fact, they might just be that-ceremonial with the contractors of Blackwater/Xe holding the real force for the new sovereigns: the corporate executives.