Appointment
of Brookfield Asset Management
Chairman
as Government Economic Advisor
Government Corruption Knows No Bounds
The cartel party government led by Prime Minister Trudeau has given the former governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney the official position of economic advisor. Carney is no stranger to politics having held prominent roles within the financial oligarchy including governor of the Bank of England. Currently he is Chairman of Brookfield Asset Management and head of its transition investing. He also holds directorships and leading positions in numerous other monopolies including the online payments firm Stripe, the investment firm PIMCO, Bloomberg and the World Economic Forum.
Brookfield Asset
Management has long used political connections and laws
such as
the Companies'
Creditors Arrangement Act
(CCAA) to enrich itself, becoming one of the largest real
estate
and
investment cartels in the world. The CCAA insolvency
legislation
for
large companies has been
used extensively to seize what belongs to workers by
right such
as
their pensions and to damage local suppliers.
At present, Brookfield is seeking assistance in dealing with the crisis in the commercial real estate sector, which has been aggravated as office employees are working from home. The crisis has led to a downturn in the market value of many buildings in the core areas of major cities including Ottawa and Toronto. As one method to alleviate the crisis in the sector, powerful private interests are using their representatives in governments to dictate policies forcing office workers back to their offices against their will to do precisely what they are doing at home, such as zoom meetings and computer work. The federal Treasury Board, without any discussion or rational explanation, is demanding all federal office workers spend at least three days a week in offices. The Ontario Ford government has made similar anti-worker demands. (Horror stories have been circulated about the poor rat-infested and moldy state of some of the buildings).
Brookfield is also floating a $50 billion investment fund, which it will lead and manage, and is expected to reap enormous profit. It wants $10 billion in seed money to come from the federal government, $36 billion from Canadian pension funds and $4 billion from itself.
Another area of interest for Brookfield is mortgage insurance for which it is the largest private lender in Canada. To assist its mortgage lending business, federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on September 16, just one week after Carney's appointment, announced changes to mortgage rules for first-time home buyers. The changes allow a larger home price cap of $1.5 million and an increase in the length of mortgages to 30 years, which lowers the income requirement to qualify for a mortgage. Any buyer with less than a 20 per cent down payment -- which would include almost all first-time home buyers -- must purchase mortgage default insurance, which will channel more business to Brookfield. Precisely such schemes have led to hundreds and thousands of mortgage foreclosures in the U.S.
Another area of concern for Carney is Telesat and its Lightspeed satellite constellation project to provide satellite Internet connection in northern Canada. Carney is reported to be "good friends" with Telesat CEO Dan Goldberg. The company is seeking a "public-private partnership" arrangement for Lightspeed with the federal and Quebec governments including a $2.14 billion loan from the Government of Canada and a $400 million loan from the Government of Quebec. Certain Conservative Party members of Parliament are denouncing the plan and campaigning for Starlink, a competing satellite company wholly owned by Elon Musk's global aerospace cartel SpaceX.
Michelle Rempel Garner, Conservative Party MP from Calgary wrote a denunciation of Carney's appointment. She advised him that for appearances' sake he should have become a registered lobbyist instead of a government advisor.
Garner writes, "While the Liberals may not have a clear line of sight on whose interest they're supposed to be looking out for, Brookfield, on the other hand, does. As a publicly traded for-profit company, its executives are focused on making money for Brookfield's shareholders. Where the problem lies is that as one of Brookfield's top executives, that would be Mr. Carney's primary interest, too.
"So, there is no way he should be anywhere close to formally influencing the Prime Minister on economic policy without significant guardrails. In fact, he should probably consider registering under Canada's Lobbying Act instead."
It is a ridiculous complaint which begs the question: What "significant guardrails" would change the aim of private interests not being the aim of governments that represent and promote those private interests?
Politics is the concentrated expression of the dominant economics "influencing" the current governments in Canada. Those politics, as the concentrated expression of the imperialist economy and the aim of those in control, are only challenged with significant organized resistance on the part of the exploited social class. The aim of dominant private interests who control the socialized economy for maximum profit finds expression in official politics through their representatives in government. The result among other things is policies to pay the rich, provide their enterprises with defence against competitors, regulations that do not "interfere" with their aim, cheap publicly supplied infrastructure and supply lines, and legislation to attack organized workers who act to assert their rights and claims.
Brookfield is powerful within the economic sector where it operates. It comes up against problems in the economy because of the inherent contradiction of its aim to serve its thirst for private profit with a modern socialized economy that demands a modern aim of cooperation to serve the people and humanize the social and natural environment. To maintain its power and control, Brookfield like all monopolies seeks assistance from the state and its treasury through its political representatives. However, these pay-the-rich schemes will not save the sector or the economy from crisis.
The
modern socialized economy demands those who do the work
assert
their
rights and claims and assume control with a modern
socialized
aim and
method of work of cooperation to serve the whole and all
its
parts
equally for the good of all. This is what is required if
the
socialized
economy is to
function without recurring crises and unleash the full
potential
and
productivity of the modern forces of production. The
reality of
the
situation forces the working class to be political with
its own
thinking and modern outlook and to wage a determined
organized
defence
of its rights and claims and
prepare itself to win and assume control of the
socialized
economy and
government and build the New.
Garner's Conservative Party cartel grouping has represented Brookfield in the past while Harper was Prime Minister when it grew substantially to become a global concern. Carney's policy objectives of growing the economy to serve private interests, which mean growing certain cartels in opposition to others, are in line with the policies of all the parties in government. Nothing less is to be expected except to the extent the working class leads the people to break with cartel party imperialist politics, constitute itself the nation with a modern outlook and reference point, vest sovereignty in the people, and embark on a new direction for the economy with relations in harmony with its socialized nature.
The appointment of Carney will not save the Liberal government and it will not save the Conservatives either.
This article was published in
Volume 54
Number 9 - September 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M540095.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca