There is a lot more behind Hosni Mubarak digging in his heels and setting his thugs on the peaceful protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square than pure politics. This is also about money. Mubarak and the clique surrounding him have long treated Egypt as their fiefdom and its resources as spoils to be divided among them.

Under sweeping privatisation policies, they appropriated profitable public enterprises and vast areas of state-owned lands. A small group of businessmen seized public assets and acquired monopoly positions in strategic commodity markets such as iron and steel, cement and wood. While crony capitalism flourished, local industries that were once the backbone of the economy were left to decline. At the same time, private sector industries making environmentally hazardous products like ceramics, marble and fertilisers have expanded without effective regulation at a great cost to the health of the population.

A tiny economic elite controlling consumption-geared production and imports has accumulated great wealth. This elite includes representatives of foreign companies with exclusive import rights in electronics, electric cables and automobiles. It also includes real estate developers who created a construction boom in gated communities and resorts for the super-rich. Much of this development is on public land acquired at very low prices, with no proper tendering or bidding.

It is estimated that around a thousand families maintain control of vast areas of the economy. This business class sought to consolidate itself and protect its wealth through political office. The National Democratic party was their primary vehicle for doing so. This alliance of money and politics became flagrant in recent years when a number of businessmen became government ministers with portfolios that clearly overlapped with their private interests.

The legitimate social and economic demands of the people were repressed and denied, and the regime used the police to control the population. Under emergency laws, the police acquired extensive powers and engaged in surveillance and monitoring of the population. Torture and abuse in police stations became routine. Police roadblocks and checks were part of the daily reality of Egyptians. Under the generalised corruption, the police engaged in extortion and offered their services to private interests.

Egypt was governed as a private estate. Mubarak's immediate family is implicated in crony capitalist activities as partners of most of the businessmen who benefited from the regime's corruption.

These beneficiaries do not want to leave their palaces, beaches and resorts, lucrative businesses and extreme riches. These are fixed assets that could not be transferred outside the country - although it should be noted that the ruling elites have siphoned off much capital to foreign banks. Nonetheless, it is the country-turned-private-estate they do not wish to abandon - that's why they deployed the thugs in Tahrir Square to terrorise the population.

Facing the growing possibility of losing their illegitimately acquired wealth and power, the regime and its cronies resorted to the techniques and practices that they have previously used with impunity to silence all opposition and resistance. However, the magnitude of popular mobilisation and the resolve to fight for dignity and freedom have rendered the regime's tactics obsolete.

A Private Estate Called Egypt

meanwhile, back at crime headquarters .....

The Obama administration's immediate response was to back the president, Hosni Mubarak, to the dismay of the protesters. Joe Biden, the vice-president, insisted on 27 January that Mubarak was not a dictator.

By last Tuesday that position was reversed. Obama abandoned Mubarak an hour after the Egyptian president said he would remain in office until September, saying it would be better if the transition process began "now". That was the message on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

On Saturday, the US envoy to Egypt, Frank Wisner, told a defence conference in Munich that Mubarak should be allowed to stay in office during the transition process: "I believe that President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical." The US state department distanced itself from this, saying Wisner was speaking on his own behalf.

Today, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said America would adopt a wait-and-see approach to the involvement in talks of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite harbouring deep suspicions about the opposition movement. She was speaking a day after she aligned the US with the Egyptian vice-president, Omar Suleiman, whom she backs to lead the transition from dictatorship to free and fair elections - in an apparent move to sideline Mubarak.

Egyptian crisis: Dithering White House all at sea

and, from the sidelines ....

Lord Blair of Isfahan popped up on CNN the other night, blustering badly when asked if he would compare Mubarak with Saddam Hussein. Absolutely not, he said. Saddam had impoverished a country that once had a higher standard of living than Belgium - while Mubarak had increased Egypt's GDP by 50 per cent in 10 years.

What Blair should have said was that Saddam killed tens of thousands of his own people while Mubarak has killed/hanged/tortured only a few thousand. But Blair's shirt is now almost as blood-spattered as Saddam's; so dictators, it seems, must now be judged only on their economic record. Obama went one further. Mubarak, he told us early yesterday, was "a proud man, but a great patriot".