Don't be fooled, Obama isn't visiting India for any love – the money and the guns behind the man are

“Follow the money.” It's the only algorithm we need to decipher the intent of any visiting head of state in the 21st century. US President Barack Obama isn't concerned about building a meaningful relationship between Indian and American citizens. But he is interested in establishing a corporate state in India. To do this, it will require plenty of money in the right hands and a protection racket to keep profits flowing. An Indian corporate state would be indentured to the United States by way of secret trade agreements and security alliances beneficial to corporations in the finance and defence industries. American and Indian voters would have no say in any important decisions potentially affecting hundreds of millions of people in both countries.

This may come off as overly cynical and even conspirative, but let's look at the legacy of the money and the guns behind the man visiting India in a few days. Obama raised a record-setting $745 million during his first presidential run in 2008, with many of his top campaign contributors coming from top Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs. The cool one million Goldman slipped into Obama's back pocket may not sound like much, but the returns for Goldman Sachs and other banks investing in the Obama brand was huge.

First off, the million dollars in chump change paid for a former registered Goldman Sachs lobbyist by the name of Mark Patterson.

Patterson served as chief of staff under treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, who helped oversee the ten billion dollars from the $700 billion pot of the Troubled Assets Relief Programme (TARP) bailout fund earmarked for Goldman. In addition to TARP money during the financial crisis, the US central bank – the Federal Reserve – made low or no-interest loans to Goldman Sachs totalling $782 billion between the months of March 18, 2008 and April 22, 2009. These transactions first occurred under the Bush administration, but going forward it was important to Goldman and other banks receiving TARP and Fed money that the next president would be banker-friendly and not investigate, prosecute, and jail Wall Street criminals responsible for a smorgasbord fraudulent business practices giving rise to the worst recession since the 1929 stock market crash.

That initial one million dollar investment in a presidential candidate also bought Goldman a token get-out-of-jail-free card in the event Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein ever wanted to whip it out at a Fifth Avenue cocktail party. It would make a nifty addition to his Financial Times “2009 Person of the Year” award for ripping off the American people. More to the point, the will to prosecute Wall Street bankers under Obama was and is non-existent. As head of the United States department of justice, attorney general Eric Holder made it clear in the aftermath of the Wall Street bailouts that “too big to fail” banks were also too big to prosecute. “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them,” Holder said. “If you do prosecute, it will have a negative impact on the national or perhaps even the world economy, and I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”

In total, Wall Street institutions received a grossly under-reported $16 trillion in bailouts from the Federal Reserve during and after the 2008 financial crisis. Even the top ten corruption scandals in India combined don't even approach the staggering sum of US government payouts to American and foreign financial institutions in order to keep business as usual afloat.

Follow the money. 

To say that the Obama brand's visit to India is about establishing stronger economic ties between the US and India is a monstrous understatement. After ironing out strained relations over Indian farm subsidies in WTO trade talks, both nations seem eager to press forward in expanding trade and expediting American investments in India. Never mind if WTO mandates could potentially hurt farmers and worsen poverty and hasten food insecurity in India – all of which were the Modi government's concerns when balking at implementing the full WTO program initially. Even if Modi successfully works around WTO compliance issues and still manages to provide adequate subsidies to Indian farmers, it's worth noting a UN report in 2011 which called out WTO policies for harming small-scale famers in poor countries.

Follow the guns. 

At some point, perhaps when Obama and Modi are seated together and watching the procession of tanks rolling down Rajpath during the Republic Day parade, both leaders will likely discuss extending the Defence Cooperation Agreement for another ten years. Or the pending sales of military hardware from US companies like Boeing and Ratheon seeking to offload Apache attack helicopters and Javelin anti-tank missiles to the Indian government. This is striking in that just before Obama came to power there were no US military sales to India in 2008. But that all changed with a boon of military hardware orders to the tune of $8 billion in that same year. Companies like Boeing, Ratheon, and Lockheed Martin lined up to cash in on India's plan to spend $100 billion to upgrade its largely outdated Soviet era military arsenal over the next decade.

All in the name of national security and the war on terror for the public's consumption. But realistically, when we follow the money, it's all about profits and protecting the pyramid scheme which benefits but a few thousand people out of hundreds of millions. Obama isn't visiting India to sample Nihari or to snap selfies in front of the Taj Mahal. He comes backed by Wall Street cash and a stash of military weaponry looking to recruit a few more gangsters into the fold of his mafia state. It's really that simple.