Bailout of Mexico

Did you ever wonder whether there are any constitutional limitations on the use of your tax dollars, other than to observe the separation of church and state? Well, President Clinton just brazenly decided that even Congress is not needed in applying $20 billion of your dollars to bailout the corrupt Mexican government, its billionaire oligarchs and the Wall St. companies that speculated in Mexican bonds and securities.

For the past month, Clinton has been seeking a Congressional vote to authorize him to extend a $40 billion loan guarantee to Mexico. Congress signaled in many ways that such a massive loan guarantee won’t pass muster. There was too much opposition back home by people who think that investment should be in this country and not for saving wealthy crooks, speculators and foreign bureaucrats from their own avaricious follies.

In a final effort at legitimization, on January 30, 1995, Clinton trotted out past Cabinet Secretaries and the support of three past Presidents urging Congress to act. The next day, he abandoned seeking legal authority from Congress and said he would do it by himself, by Presidential edict.

He stiffed Congress and the overwhelming opposition of the American people and said that on this matter he would become the “maximum leader”. So the Mexican government is to become an official welfare ward of the American taxpayers.

The downtrodden Mexican people won’t benefit from this bailout; none of this money goes to the local economies to provide credit to hardworking peasants or to construct health, education or public works facilities. Not at all, the Clinton scheme is heading directly to Mexico City to facilitate the repayment of investments by the rich in Mexico and Wall Street.

What he, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, formerly co­director of Goldman Sachs which is deep in troubled Mexican investments, and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the newly politicized Federal Reserve, are intending is a “back-door bailout”, a veritable financial “coup d’etat.”

Clinton tried to assume a more diverse cover by saying that the U.S. Treasury would put up $20 billion from its supersecret “Exchange Stabilization Fund,” and that the International Monetary Fund would add $17.5 billion and $10 billion would be drawn from the supersecret Bank of International Settlements (BIS).

What Clinton did not say was that the United States is the biggest donor to the IMF and that the Federal Reserve has long had a nutritional commitment to the Swiss-based BIS.

He also failed to mention that depleting these funds would only delay the day when Clinton goes to Congress and demands megabillions of your tax dollars to replenish them.

Even more troubling is that this back-door bailout should not pass constitutional muster. Only Congress can appropriate monies and all budgets appropriated must be made public under the U.S. Constitution. Clinton, feeding off and extending the lawlessness of previous Administrations, has decided to throw Congress aside and bow to the dictates of Wall Street.

Now if you and other taxpayers want to sue your government for violating the Constitution, you would have a reasonable case to be heard. After all, Congress did not appropriate monies for this Mexican bailout — the stabilization fund was designed to support the dollar, not the peso, the rupee, the ruble, or the yuan, in global currency markets. And the details of this fund’s expenditures have not been made public.

Nor has Clinton indicated what conditions are to be imposed on Mexico’s government for such largess and whether any such conditions are at all enforceable.

Clinton was talking about requiring Mexico’s oil revenues to be collateral for the loan guarantees. As Ross Perot testified before the Senate Banking Committee, if that were to be so, then why can’t the Mexican debtors offer their creditors such collateral and settle the problems between them without Washington.

In any event, should you decide to sue The Clinton government on this edict, the courts would rule that you or any taxpayer would not have “standing to sue.” Then who does have standing? Probably no one, except the Attorney General who is unlikely to sue her own President.

So you see, there really are no legal controls on how your tax dollars can be used outside the church-state separation. In the past, they have been used to promote corporate tobacco sales abroad and to reimburse the legal fees of defense companies successfully sued by the government for criminal violations. Now they can be used, by Presidential edict, for the mess in Mexico.

Maybe you think this new Congress will do something about this Bankers’ government run riot. But not without your expressed demands that they do so. For the pols on Capitol Hill are still afraid of the aroused people.