Asst. Treasury Sec.: Banks Back US Intervention

[D-Mack]

Asst. Treasury Sec.: Banks Back US Intervention

Assistant Secretary Details Banking Industry's Key Role in Foreign Policy



When covering America’s interventionist foreign policy, certain departments and agencies come up a lot. The Defense Department, certainly. The CIA, usually. The State Department, the NSA, the list goes on. Rarely does the Treasury Department come up, but maybe it should.
Assistant Secretary Cohen

Speaking at a conference for the American Bankers Association, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury David S. Cohen went into excruciating detail about his department’s role in ensuring that the American banking industry is on the front lines of fights the world over.
And it really is the world over. From propping up Mexico’s government in what he called “a courageous fight against the drug cartels” to preventing Iran from “developing nuclear weapons,” there appears to be no overseas endeavor in which Secretary Cohen doesn’t envision a massive role for the Treasury Department, and for the ostensibly private organizations that make up the banking industry.
Though Cohen made some interesting revelations with respect to Afghanistan, including the somewhat surprising claim that the Taliban is much better financed than al-Qaeda, the bulk of his speech detailed a chilling ambition to see the banking industry pulled ever deeper into the war at home as well as abroad, and his claim that “routine suspicious activity” could be the centerpiece of uncovering international terror networks suggest that the average person’s financial transactions will be under ever-increasing scrutiny.

A tough job, while Treasuries sell themselves

[Slimprofits]

Re: Asst. Treasury Sec.: Banks Back US Intervention

Before that, I worked in Treasury's Office of General Counsel, and was part of Treasury's efforts in the late 1990s to internationalize our anti-money laundering laws. Along with my Treasury colleagues at the time, we drafted and sought to elicit Congressional interest in legislation that, after 9/11, formed the core of the AML provisions in Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Government is always looking to expand, just waiting for the right moment. Lately I've been questioning the American Patriot mythology.

American tolerance for despotism has grown over the years. The Federalists were eventually voted out of power, in part because of the Alien and Sedition acts, but the Federalists were in many cases the very Founders that are at center of the myth.

Some might point to the Congressional elections of 2006 and say that was the people rejecting both the invasion of Iraq and the PATRIOT ACT, however there is absolutely nothing being done beyond the work of maybe less than a handful of Congressman (Paul, Kucinich, who else?) to stop the ongoing expansion of the legislation. Opposition to it has been successfully marginalized. The PATRIOT ACT will not be removed from the books in the near future.

Capital Controls, when they are expanded in the U.S. perhaps after the 2010 election, will be put in place under the guise of counter-terrorism and counter-money laundering.

[MulaMan]

Re: Asst. Treasury Sec.: Banks Back US Intervention

"Military Industrial Banking Complex"

Green Alert - Banks Good
Yellow Alert - Banks need $200 billion
Orange Alert - Banks need $400 billion
Red Alert - Terrorists on the way - Banks need $1 trillion

Bankers feeling left out.