The August Review

Privatization

On May 3, 2005, the Wall Street Journal ran a short article, "Evans Will Head Financial Services Lobby". Donald Evans is being appointed CEO of the Financial Services Forum.

Who is Donald Evans?

A native Texan, Donald Evans is a long-time and close personal friend of President George W. Bush. Until recently, he served as Secretary of Commerce. He worked for Bush's gubernatorial campaigns in 1994 and 1998, and served as chairman of the very successful Bush/Cheney campaign in 2000. In short, Evans is part of Bush's inner cicle of trusted political operators.

Who (or what) is the Financial Services Forum?

According to the press release on the Forum's own website,

The Financial Services Forum was organized in February of 2000. It is comprised of the chief executive officers of 18 of the largest and most diversified financial institutions in the United States. The purpose of the Forum is to promote policies that enhance savings and investment in the United States, and that ensure an open, competitive and sound financial services marketplace. The Forum's primary focus is on policy initiatives to advance the goal of open and competitive financial markets in the U.S. and globally.

These 18 CEO's include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P Morgan Chase & Co., Allstate Insurance, American Express, Morgan Stanley, Deutche Bank and American International Group. This group collectively is the "Who's Who" of the international banking and investment world, and represents very core of Trilateral Commission membership.

Note that "The purpose of the Forum is to promote policies that enhance savings and investment in the United States". The Wall Street Journal mentioned above inadvertently makes the connection for us -- "The forum had been a key player promoting Mr. Bush's proposal to partially privatize Social Security by allowing younger workers to set up private investment accounts that would provide a fresh flow of investments to Wall Street."

Bingo!

So, the Social Security privatization plan clearly does not have it's roots in political statesmanship, but rather in the bowels of the international banks and investment banking firms. Privatization would be a giant windfall to these financial operators, not only in hefty management fees but in increased cash (and very stable) deposits to prop up their deteriorating loan pools. There are literally trillions of dollars at stake here!

This plan is nothing short of looting the Social Security Trust Fund for personal financial gain.

The WSJ article also noted that in March the Forum "became the third defection in a month from business-led coalitions backing Bush's plan." In other words, whatever dissention existed amongst the 18 CEO's, it caused them as a group to temporarily fall away from a unified position.

It's very interesting that they created a new position of CEO and selected Donald Evans to fill it! Will Evans be up to the task of getting these other CEO's back on the same page again? This writer would not bet against it!

Side note: This writer's guess is that Donald Evans' star is only beginning to rise. If there was ever a management position to covet, being CEO to 18 of the most powerful CEO's in the world would be it!

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