The Shutdown of the U.S. Government and “Debt Default”: A Dress Rehearsal for the Privatization of the Federal State System?

• The Shutdown of the U.S. Government and “Debt Default”: A Dress Rehearsal for the Privatization of the Federal State System? 
  by Prof Michel Chossudovsky, http://www.globalresearch.ca/ 
  The “shutdown” of the US government and the financial climax associated with a deadline date, leading to a possible “debt default” of the federal government is a money making undertaking for Wall Street.
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  Several overlapping political and economic agendas are unfolding. Is the shutdown –implying the furloughing of tens of thousands of public employees– a  dress rehearsal for the eventual privatization of important components of the federal State system?
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  A staged default, bankruptcy and privatization is occurring in Detroit (with the active support of the Obama administration), whereby large corporations become the owners of municipal assets and infrastructure.
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  The important question:  Could a  process of “State bankruptcy” –which is currently afflicting local level governments across the land– realistically occur in the case of the central government of the United States of America?
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  This is not a hypothetical question.  A large number of developing countries under the brunt of  IMF “economic medicine” were ordered by their external creditors to dismantle the State apparatus,  fire millions of public sector workers as well as privatize State assets.  The IMF Structural Adjustment Program (SAP)  has also been applied in several European countries.
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  Will this gamut of deadly macro-economic reforms engineered by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve be conducive to widespread civil disorder across the United States?
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  While the declaration of a national emergency or martial law is not envisaged, reports confirm that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is currently “engaged in acquiring heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets.”  In the words of Ellen Brown, “somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest…”
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  Fiscal Collapse
  Flash back to the meltdown of Wall Street in September 2008. In the wake of the economic crisis, a process of fiscal collapse was initiated. The evolving fiscal crisis had set the stage. It has a direct bearing on the issue of shutdown of the federal government and “debt default”.
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  The Bush and Obama bank bailouts had led to the appropriation of $1.45 trillion of US  tax revenues. This money was channeled to Wall Street under Bush’s Troubled Assets Relief  Program (TARP) and Obama’s bailout program initiated at the outset of his first term. This money was transferred to the banks.
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  Meanwhile, “defense expenditure” in support of a war economy had spiraled: 740 billion dollars had been allocated (FY 2010) to fund a vast process of militarization including America`s wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.
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  “Black Budgets”
  Of significance, there were several other unreported shadowy multibillion dollar bailouts which do not appear in government accounts, not to mention the Pentagon’s black budgets which are not included in the official expenditure accounts of the Department of Defense.
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  According to Aviation Week in a 2009 report:
  “the Pentagon’s ‘black’ operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside it, are roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan, and 10 per cent of the total.” (see  Big Increases for Intelligence and Pentagon “Black” Programs in 2010 By Tom Burghardt, May 13, 2009
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  War and Wall Street”: Spiraling Public Debt
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  read more!

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