Congress comes back

REVERSING decades of decline, the Congress party has won India’s month-long general election by a bigger margin than its most optimistic followers had dared dream of. As results were counted on Saturday May 16th it looked likely to win around 200 of 543 available seats, which would represent the biggest win by any party for 18 years.

Under the prime ministership of Manmohan Singh, Congress will return to power at the helm of a simpler and, it is expected, more stable coalition than it has presided over for the past five years. Its United Progressive Alliance was projected to win around 260 seats. For additinal support, Congress will be able to choose from an eager host of independents and small regional parties, including several recently jettisoned allies.

India’s Communist parties, which provided support and endless headaches to the outgoing government for most of its tenure, will not be among them. The leftists were projected to do unprecedentedly badly, winning around 24 seats—down from their 2004 tally of 62. A new Congress ally in West Bengal, the Trinamul Congress, is the main beneficiary. It was set to win 20 of 42 seats in West Bengal, a state the Communists have ruled for three decades.

Confounding most predictions, another Congress ally, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, has clung on to win around half of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, a state it swept in 2004. Yet it was Congress’s performance that was most remarkable. In the absence of any obvious national issue, or enthusiasm for Mr Singh and his patron, the party’s leader, Sonia Gandhi, it trounced its main rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which looked likely to win around 120 seats. In Rajasthan, which the Hindu nationalists swept in 2004, Congress was expected to win 21 of a possible 25 seats. It was also set to win ten seats in Gujarat, which is known for Hindu-Muslim violence and was considered solidly for the BJP.

Perhaps most significantly, Congress may have more than doubled its former account in Uttar Pradesh (UP), with 21 of 80 seats. That would probably make it the second-biggest party in India’s most populous state, behind the Samajwadi party, a low-caste Hindu outfit and sometime Congress ally, which was expected to win 23 seats. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is dedicated to dalits (former “untouchables”) and rules UP, looked set to win 20 seats—half the tally its ambitious leader, Mayawati, had counted on.

At first glance, this looked to vindicate Congress’s decision to contest solo in UP, a giant state it once dominated and has long talked of recapturing. Congress’s decision to stand alone in Bihar, where it looked set to win only two out of 40 seats, was less fruitful—though given the collapse of its erstwhile ally there, the Rashtriya Janata Dal party, from 22 seats in 2004 to perhaps three, it may not have been costly.

Both decisions were attributed to Rahul Gandhi, Mrs Gandhi’s 38-year-old son. His father, Rajiv Gandhi, grandmother, Indira Gandhi, and great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, were all prime ministers of India. Mr Singh, a 76-year-old economist, is set to be the first Indian prime minister since Nehru to return to the office after serving a five-year term. But many expect that Mr Gandhi, who was re-elected to his safe seat in UP, will take over the job within a year or two.

Appearing alongside Mrs Gandhi on Saturday, Mr Singh, who has recently undergone heart-bypass surgery and campaigned little during the election, said he hoped Mr Gandhi, who entered politics in 2004, would agree to join his next cabinet. Commenting on her party’s victory, Mrs Gandhi, the enigmatic Italian-born widow of Rajiv, said: “Eventually the people of India know what’s good for them and they always make the right choice.”

That an unexpected multitude of the 714m voters registered for this election plumped for Congress is undeniable. Early figures suggest Congress increased its vote-share from 26.7% in 2004 to around 29%. And its leaders can congratulate themselves on this. Ruling in a coalition for the first time, Congress has delivered steadier government than many expected. It can also lay claim to unprecedented economic growth for its first four years in power—even if this was largely founded on economic reforms introduced by its predecessors and unusually clement global economic conditions.

Congress also seems to have benefitted from voters’ rising distaste for its rivals. At a time of relative calm between Hindus and Muslims, the BJP used its Hindu-supremacist rhetoric sparingly, and struggled for a convincing alternative. It also seems to have been worse affected than Congress by the traditional anti-incumbency urge of Indian voters, having until recently run state-level governments in several of its northern strongholds, including Rajasthan.

Excited by their success, some in Congress detect a deeper trend—a shrinkage in the appeal of regional parties, such as the BSP, whose rise has constituted the main trend in Indian politics for two decades. That would be good, giving hope for less chaotic and corrupt central governments than Indians are sadly accustomed too. Alas, Congress’s small success in UP is too little evidence for this claim. But Indians can at least expect their new government to be less fractious than its predecessor. And considering the remarkably messy coalition that might have been, if the vote had been as divided as predicted, that is a major blessing.

Hazards of being a political journalist: Rajdeep Sardesai

One of the professional hazards of being a political journalist is that you are expected to predict exact election outcomes . It's meant to be your USP, the basis for your dinner invite. Yet, over the last few weeks, as one has been repeatedly asked to predict election 2009, the response has been to simply and honestly say, "I don't know."

Never before has an Indian election left so many people so confused about the final verdict. Perhaps, the ghosts of 2004 still haunt all of us and have made us a little cautious. More accurately, it is a reflection of the reality than an Indian general election is no longer one election, but possibly 543 elections being played out at the same time, with almost every constituency having its own unique set of issues and individuals to deal with.

Take Mumbai for instance. If in North Mumbai, the absentee MP Govinda has been an issue in itself for voters, in the neighbouring north-west constituency, slum rehabilitation is a major concern. While a section of South Mumbai goes into cataclysms over 26/11, another part of the same constituency is worried about unsafe old buildings. How is it possible to safely predict a trend for even a single city when there are such sharp variations even within a constituency?

Delimitation has made predictions even more hazardous. As the maps of constituencies are redrawn, there is no history to fall back on, no previous trends that can be used as a reliable barometer. Delimitation has dramatically altered the demographics of several constituencies. To take South Mumbai as an example again: affluent Pedder Road must now co-exist with not just middle class Kalbadevi, but also with the Maharashtrian labour stronghold of Parel.

Another new challenge is the sheer competitiveness of each election. Very few constituencies in the country can strictly claim to be bipolar any longer. In almost every constituency, there are now powerful rebels contesting as independents, or smaller parties attempting to play the role of 'spoilers'.

Will Raj Thackeray's MNS play this role in pockets of Maharashtra, will the Muslim-dominated AUDF be a factor in Assam, which major party will Chiranjeevi damage more in Andhra, how much vote share will a Vijaykanth get in Tamil Nadu, and, of course, just how much vote will the Bahujan Samaj party take across the country? In the answers to these questions and more, perhaps lies the key to unlocking the great Indian election puzzle.

And yet, with all the statutory warnings and before being accused of a complete cop out on predictions, it is possible to do some basic trend-spotting. Firstly, it is clear that the definition of a 'national' party needs to be redrawn. The Congress, as a result of its withering away in several major states, is in serious contention in a little over 300 of the 543 seats in the country. The BJP, which has more severe geographical limitations, is in the race in even a lesser number of seats. It should then come as no surprise that both the major 'national' parties are looking to win around 160 seats, or less than a third of the total Lok Sabha, as enough to claim victory as the single largest party.

It is equally true that the so-called Third Front, if not a parking lot or a roadside dhaba, as it has been variously called, is clearly a fragile arrangement designed to further individual ambitions of its gaggle of leaders. A front that is unlikely to cross the 150 mark can hardly offer the basis for a cohesive non-BJP, non-Congress alternative.

Which is why it is increasingly clear that while millions of Indians may have braved heat and cynicism to vote over five grueling rounds, the knockout round - the sixth and critical one - really only begins from May 16th. When netas talk of post poll options, they are effectively acknowledging their failure, either as single parties or even as pre-poll alliances, to have won the confidence of a majority of voters. Post-poll then is a euphemism for reducing an election verdict to an auction house, based less on any ideological commitment but almost entirely on a chilling pragmatism.

In 2009, Indian politics is not short of its pragmatic kingmakers. A Prakash Karat may be driven by ideological antipathy towards both the BJP and the Congress, but almost everyone around him has no similar rigid worldview. A Jayalalithaa's chemistry may be with the BJP, but her arithmetic dictates that it's the Congress that can deliver what she most wants: the fall of the Karunanidhi government. A Mayawati may have taken on both the Congress and the BJP, but she would happily deal with anyone who will make her India's first Dalit prime minister.

A Sharad Pawar may have allied with the Congress in Maharashtra, but is looking to cut a deal with anyone who will coronate him in Delhi. Nitish Kumar may be projected as the new secular hope, but his presence at an NDA rally with Narendra Modi should be seen as a decision based on his desire to remain chief minister of Bihar, atleast for now. Naveen Patnaik may have suddenly discovered the darker side of the sangh parivar just before the elections, but a hung verdict in the Orissa assembly could lead to a potential rediscovery of old allies. Not to forget the even smaller parties - like the PMK, Paswan's Lok Janshakti, -- who will simply ally with anyone who will promise them their permanent seat in the union cabinet.

In a sense, the 2009 verdict must be seen as another act in a chapter of Indian politics that began two decades ago when the Congress's monopoly position was seriously threatened for the first time. Since then, it has been apparent that the vacuum left behind has not been completely filled, either by the BJP or the regional forces. Political India today is a mirror cracked, with each political party reflecting broken glass shards. Holding together the shattered pieces will always be a tough and painful process, which is why we may be in for a long and cruel summer.

P.S. For those still interested in numbers, here is a tip: in the last election, the office sweepstakes on how many seats the NDA would get was won by the office canteen boy. This time, it could well be my local panwallah who has the last laugh.

Rajdeep Sardesai

From

www.ibnpolitics.com

The Indian Political League = Indian Premier League

This summer has been a harvest for the media in India. Cricket and Politics dominated the front pages.
Political League seems to be riding on a high tide with the UPA Daredevils and NDA Super Kings fighting it out despite the Royal Challenge by Royal Third Front Challengers. In this year’s political league, a phenomenal change is that, players are exchanged or bought by other franchisees. A inform player this year, Jayalalithaa from Tamil Nadu is bought by Royal Third Front Challengers. UPA Dare Devils’ key players like Sharad Pawar is in the verge of getting sold to Royal Challengers. However Pawar seems to be comfortable with the current team. The team’s captain, Sonia Gnadhi is expecting to come back to power by winning the series. NDA Super Kings boasts of a good captain, L K Advani who is in form playing well in Gujarat( with a good partnership with Narendra Modi who made a century) and Madhya Pradesh. He is also supposed to of good physical fitness. But NDA Super Kings has sold off its Orissa spin bowler Naveen Patnaik. Naveen Patnaik was bought by Royal Challengers later for a fair amount of money in the form of a CPIM seat. Royal Challengers adopts multiple captaincy formula, which its coach Prakash Karat suggested. However another player in the team, Mayawati did not like the option at first but adopted it later.
The controversial moment in the IPL (Indian Political League) was when the captains of Super Kings LK Advani slapped Daredevils batsman Manmohan Singh to show he was strong enough to lead a team. Manmohan who broke into tears in front of camera, hit him with some stuff which led to the interference of match referee named Media.

The game of this election Twenty20 is rocking the floor all around India. The game has got more sponsors than the last Indian Political League which was held in 2004. This year’s IPL is also showcasing the emergence of young cricketers like Rahul Gandhi and Varun Gandhi, but anyway, the IPL remain as a game for the seniors like Advani and Sonia Gandhi who are also hitting sixes and cracking the fire.

Media during the time of Rcession

Its hard time for the international media these days. A 150 year old newspaper has shut down its publication in US. The newspaper which is held prestigious by Americans, The New York Times  has mortgaged its blazing building for cash. The NDTV, most respected English newschannel in India has incurred a loss of Rs 125 Crore. Whats all this signalling?? Yes, the recession too has affected the media and media is in a deep crisis. 

It was when I approached the office of Malayala Manorama, here in Cochin when I came to know that media is almost crippled of recession. Thomas Ravi, the General Manager( Circulation), in Malayala Manorama said, the paper need to cut almost 30 crores to keep its employees aboard. He said Manorama has not come to a position of laying off its employees till then. But its the case with newspapers like the Times of India. 

Its the newspaper's huge dependance in advertisements, that is making it recession-prone. Moreover the newspaper is not gaining much revenue through digital edition,also which is available free of cost.When recession struck the corporates, it freezed its promotions which was a blow to media. Media, in order to stay alive, started laying off its staffs, which came to be seen as a hardline approach worked out by media groups. 

But Western media houses, were awaiting this kind of crisis. Media crisis posed some symptoms very early itself. By the time it had posed an astronomical problem, the media giants could have checked it then itself, by catering to the needs of the changing world. But still there is a chance of survival. The online newspaper- trend is getting more prominent, these days. So newspapers can cash in on that, by making it paid for viewing e-paper. But, it will take some time to ease the current recession situation. For the sake of profit, we cannot sacrifice a tradition of "reading newspaper". For that, the newspaper need to reduce its price through overall cost cutting measures. 

Mukund P Unny

mukundparakkat@gmail.com

Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs

Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.

The rapid acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The chemical change is placing "unprecedented" pressure on marine lifesuch as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.

The study, by scientists at Bristol University, will be presented at aspecial three-day summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen, which opens today. The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and to shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.

The Bristol scientists cannot talk about their unpublished results until they are announced later today. But a summary of the findings seen by the Guardian predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells.

It says: "We find the future rate of surface ocean acidification and environmental pressure on marine calcifiers very likely unprecedented in the past 65 million years." The scientists add that the situation in the deep sea is of even "greater concern".

The scientists compared the current acidification rate with a giant prehistoric release of greenhouse gas, which geologists know caused widespread extinction of deep water species.

The summary reads: "Because the rates of acidification between past and future are comparable, and [because] there was widespread extinction of benthic organisms [lowest living], one must conclude that a similar level of extinction is more likely than not in the future."

Concern about ocean acidification from carbon pollution has grown in recent years, but the issue receives much less attention than global warming — also caused by human carbon emissions.

The Bristol study is one of the first to predict the consequences of acid waters by looking at past events. It says future deep sea acidification must be limited to 0.2 pH units to avoid the worst effects. The pH of surface waters, where the CO₂ is absorbed from the atmosphere, has fallen by about 0.1 units since the industrial revolution, though it will take longer for the acid to reach deeper water.

Ocean acidification is one of the key topics at the Copenhagen summit, with a series of presentations scheduled to examine the impacts.

Ken Caldeira, an expert on ocean acidification at the Carnegie Institution in California, will tell the conference that the next few decades could produce "profound" changes in the oceans. He will say: "The choice to continue emitting carbon dioxide means that we will be an agent of biological change of a force and magnitude exceeded only by the causes of the great mass extinction events. If we do not cut carbon dioxide emissions deeply and soon, the consequences of ocean acidification will stand out against the broad reaches of geologic time. Those consequences will remain embedded in the geologic record as testimony from a civilisation that had the wisdom to develop high technology, but did not develop the wisdom to use it wisely."

Other experts will report that acidification is already affecting marine life in the Arctic and Antarctic. They will also discuss a bizarre finding that acid waters carry sound more efficiently, so the ocean will be a much noisier place in future.

The conference comes ahead of a year of high-level political discussionson climate change, which culminate in international negotiations in Copenhagen in December, where officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who organised this week's event, has described it as "a deliberate attempt to influence policy". She said many scientists were concerned that politicians have not grasped the seriousness of the situation, despite increasingly gloomy predictions.

This week's meeting will publish an update to the 2007 report of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A number of studies published since the IPCC report was prepared show that carbon emissions are rising faster than expected and that existing greenhouse gas targets may not be enough to prevent catastrophic temperature rise.

It will also assess whether projected sea level rises have been underestimated, and if there is still a realistic chance that average global temperature rise can be limited to 2C.

Newspapers: an industry in crisis

"Newspapers are dead but it will take a while for the body to cool down."

It's unofficially official: news print is dead. Behind closed doors, web editors are united in their predictions of doom.

These particular closed doors were at Cambridge-MIT Institute's digital technologies project last Friday, where the big guns of British and US media were discussing the future of online news. 

All the editors and publishers were speaking under the Chatham House Rule, which means their quotes can't be attributed. But the consensus was clear: newspapers are dying and dragging their news sites down with them.

In the US, newspaper sales have stayed at the same level for 20 years - even though the population has increased by 25 per cent. Web audiences have boomed but newspaper sites have struggled to keep up.

So why are they falling behind? Doesn't the internet present an enormous opportunity for the future of the newspaper industry? An inexpensive, global publishing platform with unprecedented potential for multimedia publishing and customisation?

The real handicap, one delegate confessed, is starting with a traditional newspaper model and trying to adapt it for the web. The most successful websites - most notably Google - started from scratch and developed innovative, technologically-sophisticated products for the unique demands of the web environment. 

Wrapping the cast iron model of a 200-year-old newspaper around the amorphous chaos of the internet is seemingly impossible. And although the online industry is now more than 10 years old, the pace of change has simply been too rapid for newspapers.

Newspaper websites face enormous challenges from citizen journalism, rapid changes in online trends and technologies, fragmented audiences and lack of revenue sources. On top of that they often have to lock horns with management teams that are unwilling or unable to understand the internet environment.

The resistance to change 'borders on pathological', according to one news rep. The news industry is in 'profound denial' about the crisis. Another admitted the industry is completely out of touch with consumer expectations of online news.

To make things worse, the industry's executives still don't understand what the web is for: "So it doesn't make money, and it's not a back up for the newspaper?"

Short term, the plan for newspaper websites seems to be to enjoy the boom in online advertising for as long as it lasts. Experimenting with new print formats - a strong trend among UK newspapers - is an attempt to wring as much value for as long as possible from the print edition. And exploiting the blogging wave could also help by providing a low-cost source of information - if news sites can embrace the phenomenon before it starts to erode their businesses.

"No other media was ever so well suited to our business of journalism." "That's why I think it has been so successful over the past 10 years and will be in the next 10 years." UK publisher on internet news

Editors predict that by 2015, most site traffic will be generated by syndicated news content rather than random surfers. To remain competitive, sites will have to provide versatile news for a wide variety of platforms. Web users will continue to filter news content through their own beliefs and prejudices, customising their news package using favourite sites and sources.

But while newspaper sites are chained to antiquated publishing models they will struggle to innovate and will not be able to thrive online. 

One web editor described the website as a life raft for the newspaper - a powerful metaphor for the state of online news. 

Newspaper sites could drown quietly and sink without trace. But they might be washed up on a desert island and survive by being adventurous and innovative - an exciting prospect for the next era of news publishing.

The meltdown: whose crisis is it, anyway?

Many find it amusing that it took officials 11 months to declare a “recession” in the United States. Yet, it took more than 20 years to recognise worse. When does a crisis become “A Crisis?” First came ‘the boom’ — exploding debt, crazy credit, insane speculation, a finance sector gone berserk even as manufacturing declined. Then the doom — as multiple bubbles burst. Massive job losses, a credit crunch, a huge breakdown. These are some features of the ‘Crisis’ that has struck the U.S. since September.

But some of those problems, certainly ruin of industry and job losses, have plagued other, poorer nations for close to two decades now. Some even saw doom without a boom. When imposed on those societies we didn’t call these problems a crisis. We called them “reforms.” Or the painful fallout of necessary “adjustment.” When they come home to roost in Wall Street, we call it a crisis. Simply put, a crisis becomes a crisis when it hits the suits. Even within those nations on which it was imposed, the poor and hungry were devastated years before the well-off found crisis on their menu. Indeed, the predicament faced by poor people translated into the “success stories” of those elites.

Remember The Crisis that struck India in 1991? The then Finance Minister, a Dr. M. Singh, told us that our balance of payments problem and shrinking forex reserves were truly a crisis. These, he said, called for reforms on a war footing. Oddly, 400 million human beings going to bed hungry every night was never thought of as a crisis. Certainly not one to be dealt with on a war footing.

Within India, rural despair and breakdown meant little. Crisis is when the Sensex tanks. It took over a decade of intense misery before a Prime Minister figured out there were problems in the countryside. Which he then tried tackling with makeshift “relief packages” thinly spread out across hundreds of millions of people. (Even the much-needed NREGA only happened due to arm-twisting allies.) But much larger “stimulus” packages, aimed mostly at the narrow corporate world, happen in a jiffy. And Finance Ministers are quick to descend on Dalal Street within hours of a hiccup on the Sensex. They do so, as the media tenderly put it, “to soothe the market’s nerves.” Recall the short eight-day session of Parliament in 2004? It followed the historic elections of that year. The then Finance Minister was absent on the first day of that session. He was consoling the distraught millionaires of Dalal Street. The delicate sentiment of the Market had been wounded by the democratic sentiments of the Indian voter.

Even today, debate on the ‘crisis’ in the U.S. centres around how to help the banks and other financial bodies back on their feet. And that with few preconditions or questions asked. Forays into the most painful part of it — the staggering job losses — are infrequent. These are often mentioned in news items, and now form the rationale for the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act. But it is still very hard to push through the modest measures to help those crushed by the crisis — despite popular support for it. In any case, the jobs crisis never gets the priority that Wall Street’s does.

Since the meltdown began in September, the U.S. economy has seen the loss, on average, of around 17,000 jobs a day. Move the baseline to November 1 and job losses have averaged more than 19,000 a day. And the trend is getting worse. Close to 2.6 million jobs have been lost since just September. Over 1.7 million of those have vanished over the last three months. January saw the loss, on average, of more than 800 jobs every hour.

‘Understated’

Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan White House, notes that even these numbers “are likely understated.” Writing in Counterpunch.org, Mr. Roberts sums up the message of those who use un-massaged job loss data: If we revert to the methodology used in the U.S. in 1980 — before the government started fiddling definitions of joblessness — the U.S. unemployment rate would be not 7.2 per cent but 17.5 per cent.

In India, too, job losses are now finding some mention. When covered in the media, it’s mostly about jobs in the IT sector. Or those lost in related fields in the organised sector. While these are not small, only a handful of reports look at the awful hit taken, for instance, by migrant labourers. Millions of these are people who left their villages seeking work when there was no other option. They found it in construction, in laying roads and other poorly paid work. And, keeping afloat in oppressive conditions, many still managed to send something back to their families. Now, as one of them told us: “There is nothing to send back to the village and nothing to go back to the village for.” And what about all those small farmers who moved towards growing cash crops for export markets that have collapsed? And do we get to ask questions of the policy experts who brought it all to this point?

Somewhere in there persists a fond and smug belief that our innate cleverness has saved India from all those bad things out there. “What slowdown?” crowed one daily, pointing to the sums spent at IPL’s “auctions.” If our barons could spend millions of dollars acquiring a clutch of foreign cricketers, it reasoned, things couldn’t be so bad. Never mind that some of the franchisees may have laid off lots of workers, and slashed the salaries of many others. Spending three million dollars on just a couple of players is worth seeing in that context, but it won’t be. Some sections of the media celebrating the IPL’s success as proof of the economy’s vibrancy are themselves laying off many journalists and other workers.

But our elite believe that CEOs lead or should lead a charmed life. Remember their outrage when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — otherwise a darling of the corporate media — made a few bleats of protest about CEO salaries getting, er, a wee bit too large? That other media icon, Dr. Narayana Murthy of Infosys was not spared either when he called for some restraint in CEO feeding frenzy. “Pay peanuts, get monkeys” spat one contemptuous editorial. (Never mind that such publications have paid gold and got gorillas.) Now there is coverage, without much comment, of the bumbling efforts at curbing CEO pay in the U.S.

Corporate kleptocracy

Meanwhile, U.S. banks and CEOs continue to educate us on the culture of corporate kleptocracy. Take Citigroup, which hogged $45 billion of public money at the bailout trough. Soon after, it sought to spend $50 million on a corporate jet — a move that had to be squelched at the level of the Treasury Secretary. The now disgraced CEO of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, spent $1.22 million on redecorating his office in early 2008. That is, even as he prepared to cut thousands of jobs. The amount included purchase of an antique “commode on legs.” Heavy symbolism there, given the company was by then halfway down the tube with massive losses. Less than a week after the U.S. government committed $85 billion in bailout money to AIG, the insurance company’s executives whizzed off to a luxury resort where rooms could cost over $1000 a night. Blowout followed bailout. Wells Fargo ($25 billion in bailout money) laid on a trip to Las Vegas for its star execs.

Top bosses of New York financial firms paid themselves bonuses worth $18 billion in 2008. The kleptocrats clearly believe that the crisis — one that has their personal stamp on it — is for others. They themselves flourish by divine right. And the bailouts seem to confirm that. The very gangs that spurred the meltdown are rewarded with huge amounts of taxpayer money so that they can go back to doing the same things they were doing before.

Meanwhile tens of millions of human beings across the world stand to lose their jobs. Many will descend into distress and chaos. The already hungry will have it much worse. Whose crisis is it, anyway?