It appears that IMF chief Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn chose the least safe location – New York – to carry-out a “criminal sexual act, attempted rape, and unlawful imprisonment” of a 32-year-old hotel maid, if that allegation is proved in court. He will plead not guilty, said his attorney Benjamin Brafman. In essence, Strauss-Kahn might just have received the “Eliot Spitzer boot” masterminded and directed by the same Wall Street gang that engineered the past meltdown, the ongoing deep recession and the U.S. Government’s austerity programs, which international wealth continues to exploit for optimal profits.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s qualifications for winning reelection must appear enhanced. He proved himself a ruthless war monger in league with the American war machine and, if his hand is behind this debacle, a dispenser of French equalitarian justice to one of the most powerful people in the world, albeit a man who oversees a rapacious institution that leaves third-world nations poorer and might leave today’s insolvent European nations straddled with debt peonage to the world’s largest banks for decades to come. But to others, these details are sidelined by a sex story in a $3,000-a-night hotel suite at the Sofitel in Times Square perpetuated by a European “elitist”.
Behind the political scene lurks Jean-Marie Le Pen and the far-Right National Front, elated no doubt over the removal of a serious political contender and possible candidate in the April-May 2012 Presidential election. The IMF managing director had yet to say whether he would run for president, but French opinion polls put him as a clear winner over conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy if the two faced off in an election [France24]. His absence now will provide the NF leverage against Sarkozy in what looks to become a two-way race between conservatives and the far-Right, absent all representation by the Left. “The case and the charges …mark the end of his campaign and pre-campaign for the presidency and will most likely prompt the IMF to ask him to leave his post,” National Front leader Le Pen told i-Tele television.
But of equal if not greater significance, a Socialist now has been removed not only from French politics but from the larger playing field of global finance and banking, and this might prove to be the most overlooked aspect of this entire saga.
To British and America neoliberal market analysts and mavens, questions must arise about the timing of this “soft assassination”. Strauss-Kahn was on his way to Europe for a meeting on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the European debt crisis and then was to attend a euro zone finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday. But a Greek official told Reuters the arrest could cause some short-term delays in discussions over a European Union/IMF bailout for Athens, in which Strauss-Kahn was closely involved, by forcing the cancellation of key meetings. “The most likely outcome is that this case will stick,” said French economist and socialist Jacques Attaliand, “even if he pleads not guilty, which he may be, he won’t be able to be candidate for the Socialist primary for the presidency and he won’t be able to stay at the IMF.”
But farther behind the curtain might be found investment bankers and international financiers (the Spitzer “soft assassins”).
While Messrs. Spitzer and Strauss-Kahn might share a common reprehensible lust, this group represents the world’s top criminals. Like Al Capone and the Chicago mob, they continue to remain immune and prevail, while the audience is glued to sex, money and maids.
