Why are Bankers Opposed to Obama and Erdogan?

The American presidential election will be held in November. In a speech given to Congress yesterday, President Barack Obama repeated his call to end economic inequality by taking more taxes from the rich. Obama said, “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Obama emphasized that his possible opponent, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney, also pays low taxes. He said that Romney, who only pays about 3 million dollars of income tax on his 21.6 million dollar yearly income, or 13.9 percent, should pay at least 40 percent. Obama said, “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes,” while reiterating that “Warren Buffet pays a lower [tax] rate than his secretary.”

The secretary is paying more tax because capital gains earned through instruments such as investment funds and securities are taxed at a very low rate in the United States.

In fact, the decrease in financial regulation led to a rapid increase in the earnings of the banking sector and made the bankers into king-makers who govern the political system in any way that they please. Indian activist Arundhati Roy also shares this opinion saying, “One hundred of India's richest people own assets worth one-fourth of the country's GDP.“ While in the United States, 1 percent of the population controls the nation's economy and politics. Social services are trying to manage with the help of public charities rather than with taxes.

However neither India, with a population of 1.2 billion, nor the United States, with a population of 310 million, will be able to carry out its health and education services with the help of public charities. Furthermore, Roy also brought attention to contradictions, such as the aid agency of the well-known Indian company Tata. Rather than donate money to poor villagers who could not pay their debts and in turn committed suicide, it instead helped the Harvard Business School, donating 50 million dollars. In Roy’s opinion, if the course continues this way, capitalism, in complete opposition to Marx's statements, will be brought down not by the working class but instead by the rulers of capitalism, the businessmen who don't pay taxes and the bankers that know no rules.

If you ask how our choices are being made.... President Erdogan, like President Obama, is standing on the side of the poor. They changed their choices on public spending to favor the poor. They are spending more resources on health and education. Both of them want the rich to pay more taxes. The American rich oppose Obama. And the conservative Istanbul capitalists oppose Erdogan for cutting the budget annuity, for borrowing from the IMF and not giving it to them, for changing obsolete trade laws to prevent corruption and for not being tricked by the ones who make up the interest lobby, thus not letting the treasury be robbed with hot money. In short, Obama and Erdogan are two leaders who have opposed the world's capitalist leaders. Both of them are siding with the poor and are the target of strong reactions by lobbies. At the global level, the cross-ownership of the media and the banks by the capitalists are trying to play different types of games.