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Enough is Enough: Let's Stop Wall Street Loan-Sharking
The "Masters of the Universe" on Wall Street - through their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior - have plunged this country into a deep recession causing millions of Americans to lose their jobs, their homes, their savings and their hope for the future. In order to fully understand the cause of this fiasco, I have introduced legislation calling for a thorough investigation of the financial meltdown and the prosecution of those CEOs who broke the law. The culture of greed, fraud and excessive speculation must come to an end.
In the midst of this financial disaster, one of the great frustrations that I hear from my constituents is that while taxpayers are spending hundreds of billions bailing out major financial institutions, and while these big banks are getting near-zero interest rate loans from the Fed, these very same financial institutions are now charging Americans 20 percent or 30 percent interest rates on their credit cards. In fact, one-third of all credit card holders in this country are now paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 41 percent - more than double what they paid in interest in 1990. Recently, some major institutions such as Bank of America have informed responsible cardholders that their interest rates would be doubled to as high as 28 percent, without explaining why the increase was taking place.
Let's be clear. At a time when many Americans in the collapsing middle class use credit cards for groceries, gas and college expenses, what Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do when they make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the knee caps of those who can't pay back, they are still destroying people's lives.
The Bible has a term for this practice. It's called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri's epic poem, there was a special place reserved in the Seventh Circle of Hell for sinners who charged people usurious interest rates.
Today, we don't need the hellfire and pitch forks, we don't need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law. We need a national law because state laws no longer work. States used to protect consumers from predatory lenders, but strong state usury laws were obliterated by a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Justices allowed national banks to charge whatever interest rate they wanted if they moved to a state without an interest rate cap like South Dakota or Delaware. That is why I have introduced legislation to require any lender in this country to cap all interest rates on consumer loans at 15 percent, including credit cards. Why did I select 15 percent as the appropriate rate to deal with the usury which is going on in this country? The reason is that 15 percent is the maximum that Congress imposed on credit union loans almost 30 years ago when it amended the Federal Credit Union Act. And that approach has worked! Under current law, credit unions are allowed to charge higher interest rates only if their regulator, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), determines that it is necessary to maintain the safety and soundness of these institutions. Right now, while most credit unions charge lower rates, the NCUA allows credit unions to charge an interest rate as high as 18 percent.
Unlike their counterparts at the big banks, credit unions are not lining up for hundreds of billions in bailouts. In fact, they're doing quite well. As Chris Collver, legislative and regulatory analyst for the California Credit Union League recently stated; "It hasn't been an issue. Credit unions are still able to thrive." In my view, if these rules have worked well for credit unions for decades they can work for all financial institutions.
In 1991 former Senator Al D'Amato offered an amendment to cap credit card interest rates at 14 percent. The amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 74-19, but never became law. Now is the time to return to that debate.
Incredible as it may seem, over the last decade the financial sector has invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing in Washington. This includes funding some 3,000 lobbyists and huge amounts in campaign contributions.
The American people are thoroughly disgusted with the behavior of Wall Street and they want their elected officials to respond to the greed of major financial institutions. A cap on interest rates would be a good start. Do we have the courage?
- Posted in
46 Comments so far
Show AllAnd Obama continues to claim the reason we all have to make such great sacrifices on the Wall Street altar is to free up credit?
When I hear some pompous slob say we need to free up credit so people can start borrowing again, I wonder if I am taking crazy pills. Nobody wants to have to borrow. What people want is to be able to live under a standard of living where they can afford to buy what they need.
I feel the same about freeing up credit. Restarting the credit economy will only delay another and more severe melt down.
Some people want to borrow. Not the share cropper, but the shopping addict wants to buy no matter where the money comes from.
Eventually everyone will be forced to learn to be satisfied when they have what they need. It's not painful as many expect, it's liberating.
Well, sometimes you have to borrow. HOWEVER, charging 21% to 40% interest on ANYTHING is calculated to make you default on a loan. That's extortion.
"The culture of greed, fraud and excessive speculation..." = tricklism, market based solutions, de-regulation.
Reinstate 1) progressive taxation to 1980s level, 2) the Glass-Steagall Act (reverse Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), and reverse the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980.
Three cheers for Bernie Sanders, a voice for reason, sanity, and progressive political values who finds himself so often all alone, crying out in the Washington wilderness, while the major US media strives to marginalize his reform efforts by characterizing him as a radical nutcake. By all means, let the Congressional investigation of the great meltdown of 2008 begin!
I would make sure any such investigation included close scrutiny of AIG's whole market niche of "insuring" credit default swaps held by super rich, super sophisticated, super savvy investor counter-parties. The whole rationale for exempting this esoteric market from regulatory oversight was because only the masters of the universe would be participating, and they were all brilliant enough to regulate themselves. Then, when the house of cards collapses and AIG goes belly up (unable to pay off the insureds' claims), suddenly it becomes Uncle Sam's responsibility to cover the credit default swap bettors' losses.
Heads, I win. Tails, AIG covers my loss. Sounds too good to be true, because it is too good to be true. If this illusory "insurance" scam wasn't illegal at the time the scheme was cooked up, it should certainly be outlawed by Congress now and in the future.
And the biggest crime of all is the one taking place right now in broad daylight. The US treasury is commencing to pay off AIG's insurance claims by entering into a public/private enterprise "partnership" with the scamster investors, buying up their toxic assets with taxpayers ultimately footing the bill. Who says crime doesn't pay?
Bill from Saginaw
Seems like our solutions to these problems always involve fixing the current hole in the dam that is most visible, and then going back business as usual. Why are we unwilling to look at the fundamental problems of the system that we have setup for ourselves. Once a written word -- a corporation is nothing more than written word, a legal fiction -- is given the same rights as a human being and endowed with immortality, we will always be in trouble. A corporation is not only given the same rights as a person, but given a never-ending life, and only one objective -- to get its shareholders rich, there is a fundamental problem with that model and no matter what regulations we pass there will always be future Enrons and AIGs and we will be back to this again and again (that is, if we have the ability left to do this again). Why can't we have human level capitalism where no corporation (even if we allow them to exist) or business can get too big to cause a major ripple in national or world economy. This is a golden opportunity to us to rethink the fundamentals...let's not squander it.
"The "Masters of the Universe" on Wall Street - through their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior - have plunged this country into a deep recession . . . " Greed and recklessness? Yes. But I fail to see that there was anything illegal about what they did. What they did might have been irresponsible and immoral, but unfortunately, it wasn't illegal.
All the Wall Street sharks were just doing their job making as much money as they could by any means - ethical or not - and they are doing the same thing now - with a little help from their friends in Washington.
The real culprit is the Congress. The same congressmen who are now so outraged about AIG bonuses have not been worried about the lack of any regulations or supervision of the financial institutions and their practices until now.
AIG alone contributed directly to elected officials and parties $9.3 million since 1989, and the top recipients of the money include the chair of the Senate Finance Committee and the chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Between 1998 and 2008 the financial "industry" spent over $600 million on lobbying to get rid of regulations.
And here is how the TARP money gets recycled according to Newsweek:
"There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
A NEWSWEEK review of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission found that the political action committees of five big TARP recipients doled out $85,300 to members in the first two months of this year—with most of the cash going to those who serves on committees who oversee the TARP program. Among them: Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOPWhip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty." "This certainly appears to be a case of TARP funds being recycled into campaign contributions," says Brett Kappel, a D.C. lawyer who tracks donations."
Public financing, anyone?
Sioux Rose
BEA: I am inclined to see in the word "legal" the same clause utilized by Bill Clinton regarding the word "is." Lots of things have been considered legal across history because those in power bent law to their own devices. Burning witches comes to mind, not allowing Black individuals into lunch cafes, etc. More recently countless books were cooked to provide the toxic hybrid known as "derivatives" with triple A ratings. And lots of loans were made to people in no position to repay them. Taking down the wise firewall between banks and Wall St speculation may have involved an act of congress that made that particular grim strategy legal, but all along the path, many people knew they were playing with fire, and just as Bush's team hid behind words gotten from the despicable likes of Yoo and Gonzales to turn torture into "another word," we must not lean too heavily on a word, when those controling language, law, and "framing" are more corrupted than a sea of raw sewage.
Sioux Rose, I agree with you. I am not defending Wall Street, by any means. Their actions might be reprehensible, but it’s not enough to blame the fox for the damage in the henhouse. Maybe the question should be: “who let the henhouse open?”
My point is that if the flow of the money going to politicians from various special interests was eliminated, there would be more chance that they would represent you and me, rather than aforementioned special interests.
The real question is how can we replace EVERY member of the House and Senate and start fresh with those not beholden to monied interests ?
There was a lot of law breaking because these titans of finance did not fulfill their fiduciary obligation to their customers, which is a legal requirement. The executives also did not fulfill their fiduciary obligations to their shareholders, and then of course there's the cooking of the books.
Would that congress had banned Credit Default Swaps bought by those who didn't have an interest in the transaction being insured. Like nobody could have seen that one coming!
BEA: I'd go for Instant Runoff Voting before public financing. For one thing, at the moment there are no public finances available.
I think the illegality comes from fraud. Somehow, somewhere, someone knew those AA and AAA ratings were BS. We have e-mail in which someone at a ratings agency said they would "rate a cow". I'm really surprised some of these big losers like pension funds haven't filed a civil suit against the ratings agencies. Squeeze them and I bet you get a lot more.
Lesson fourteen – in the banks we trust:
I pledge allegiance to the banks of the Incorporated Estates of Earth and to the Rulers, whom they enrich, one Command throughout the land - obedience - with conformity and subservience for all.
Good vassals learn the Bank Pledge by heart when still wet from the womb. And with good reason. The Bank Pledge can take a vassal far in the Incorporated Estates of Earth. The banks are divine, and vassals mere mortals who owe their breath to the going rate of exchange. Few vassals would rather defy banks and starve than obey banks and have a chance. All is fair in love and banks.
Vassals may rent themselves freely, offering themselves upon the altar of the market at whatever rate the market and banks command. For those vassals with little or no market value: prisons. Thankfully. Not to mention urban concentration camps, reservations, and many a moonscape in the countryside. These all happily embrace the poor, once the banks have done with them.
Banks decree equitably one a vassal or a lord, depending upon your wealth. Which vassals and lords prosper enough to receive just conditions of life? The banks judge. Justice flows both to and from the banks and their best depositors. The most just depositors are the richest ones, of course, the least just the poorest. Vassals who can make no deposit at all might be thought of as the scourge of banking. Not so. The impoverished scarcely interfere with the balance sheet, thus the banks could not care less. What could be more reasonable and just than that?
apracticalpolicy.org/2009/03/18/lesson-fourteen-in-the-banks-we-trust/
Sioux Rose
TC: Jonathan Swift & Mark Twain would be proud. Great allegory.
Speaking of Hell: I remember when I first saw a photograph of John Thain, failed ex-Chief Honcho of Merrill Lynching Party. I thought, now that's what Satan would look like, a cross between a movie star and one of the not yet quite formed pod people from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".
But, but, but our government approved corporate loan sharking when congress voted for this:
Bankruptcy Bill Passes; Bush Expected to Sign
For Many, Erasing Debt Would Be Harder
By Kathleen Day
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page E01
The House gave final passage yesterday to legislation intended to make it harder for consumers to wipe out debt through bankruptcy, clearing the way for President Bush to sign the bill into law as he has promised to do.
We_The_People were sold down the river long ago.
Sioux Rose
HUMBABA: So now that those who made sure the individual could not bail out of hyper-debt turn around and expect/presume said consumer-individual will bail THEM out for THEIR egregious, shameless, amoral, sociopathic debt(s). It's like someone killing a man's family and then demanding what's left of his heirs pay for HIS retirement.
Excellent analogy. Thank you.
And since Joe Biden sponsored the bill, the Owebama administration wants to keep folks focused on real issues, like college basketball bracketology (he's one of us!)...
Hey Bernie--
Finance is not the only business based on dishonesty and extortion--so is insurance--especially healthcare insurance. How about introducing a companion bill to HR 575, for single payer health care? Bernnie if you really want to help tens of millions of truly desperate people right now, this would be a great initiative for you to sponser--hello Bernie, Bernie, are you listenjing?
Poet
I do not see anybody picking a number so I will. Let's limit interest rates to the fed rate plus 6 percent. The fed rate is current 0.25% so the limit will be 6.25% for mortgages and credit cards. Works for me. It will be interesting to see what happens when the hyperinflation kicks in.
First off thank you for all you do Mr.Sanders. There are not that many on the hill that actually 'represent' and I appreciate your efforts.
I wish that Obama would wake up and smell the deceit. It is absurd to appoint people that are as Frank Rich put it "too marinated in the insiders' culture to police it, reform it or own up to their past complicity with it."
I don't see how Obama can expect 'change' if he doesn't employ people like yourself with more progressive thoughts and ideals.
Summers and Geithner should be replaced with Nader and Spitzer. That would really shake things up and get some results.
The next time Obama finds himself in a quandary he should meet with you, Mr. Kucinich and Mr. Feingold for some 'fresh air'. He surely can't get any 'fresh air' with his newly appointed Clinton administration.
AIG is a black hole and I fail to see the reason behind engorging them with our tax dollars. It makes it difficult to comprehend why the US can't have single payer health care but can throw away billions on the wars, AIG and the pentagon.
It seems somewhat hypocritical to reward (bailout) banks when as a result of THEIR activities many people are behind on payments for homes and credit cards, which only leads to negative marks on a credit score and a higher interest rate.
We have to bail them out for their defaults but we get negative credit in the process? OY!
Thanks again for the good fight..
jim
Hey Bernie, although I appreciate you immensely, 15% might as well be a million percent. Since credit cards are unsecured loans why not just stop paying them. I have lost my love for the bankers so screw them. The middle class is paying through the nostrils anyway, why not just let the bailout money pay the banks. I'm not paying them a damn cent more.
I started doing that a year ago when I lost work. I kept not paying them out of spite when I started working again. I still have 2 accounts that are active and they've gone to 30% interest. It just doesn't make any sense to keep playing in a rigged game. I have no property on paper and I have no work on the books. I'll file my taxes and include a letter telling them to go look for my tax payment from AIG. I hear they're good for it.
When I borrowed to buy my first new car, I paid 3% interest on a $2800 loan with $75/month payments. Now I see used cars selling for $15-30,000 and my credit card (the same one I've had since the '60s, although the name of the company changes from time to time) now charges over 20% interest with huge penalties for 'late payments' (even if they're the fault of the failing USPO.)
In 2000, I bought an old used pick-up for $1500 and borrowed $900 against my credit card, paying 9% interest (for a couple months - I just moved). I haven't yet read the latest contract from the credit card company - but an interest-rate hike and more fine print are no doubt in it.
One of my employees works a second job for LESS pay than was common in the '60s - $2.33/hr.
What's wrong with this picture? Congress makes all the laws - they're the only ones responsible. Why do people keep electing the same criminals that screw them year after year after year? Maybe Americans (not all of us) deserve exactly what they're getting. And I'm not real sympathetic with the rest of the world either - they all contribute to this insanity in their own ways.
Senator Bernie Sanders,
I live in Vermont and I fully support your efforts to make the guilty parties accountable for the usury and fraud which continues to this day. Thank You for meeting with President Obama and telling him what the score is on his financial agenda and his deregulation idiologues. Thank you for fighting against Gensler. President Obama is looking like the audacity of killing hope right now. I hope you warned him that, like he once said, this is bigger than him. If he fails to return us to a half way decent society, he will be a one term president and no amount of beautiful and convincing rhetoric from him or anyone else will convince us that the crooks haven't totally taken over. Thank you for keeping the fire the the President's feet.
Senator,
Your call for justice is far too limiting. The injustice has spread far beyond the financial community, and is, in fact, rampant within the Hall in which you sit.
Better that you broaden your call for investigations to include war profiteering, constitutional violations over the past eight years as well as the greed and illegality that allowed the felons Phil and Wendy Gramm to dedicate their careers to the deregulation of securities of all sorts.
Limiting interest rates to 14%:
Let's see the Repubs argue THAT one down.
(LUV MY CREDIT UNIUON)
Thank you Bernie. Although I live in Indiana, you are one of my designated adopted Senators.
Any and all efforts to get to the bottom of the Wall Street mess will be welcome, and I feel, necessary.
Once we've nailed the culprits, the next move would be to line Wall Street with stocks, wooden ones, and fill'em up. There are plenty of culprits to stretch for miles.
The usury practiced by banks on credit card holders should earn them an orange jumpsuit at least. Their total irresponsibility must be stopped.
Thank you.
For another (generally parallel and supporting) view ...
http://www.worldreports.org/news/204_u.s._fraud_scheme_launched_monday_in_big_trouble
The comment about this not being ilegal is wrong. The folks with the books cooked them to look good and that is fraud. They were telling everyone that everything was rosy when it wasn't. Secondly the congress of the U.S. is a pack of worms that should be used for fishing off a short pier. The idea that they are in no way responsible hurts so much because it is not funny but many of the bobble heads still believe it is Obama's fault when guess who started this mess to pay off his campaign contributors???? Some day there will be a calling up of the bad guys but by then America will be a shell and the money will have been spirited out of the country.
As little as I know about it, I think that, for the most part, financial activities that caused the downfall of companies like AIG and this crisis, were not illegal. I am not saying that they shouldn't have been illegal, or that financial institutions haven't done anything illegal, like cooking the books. Perhaps they have, but I am not aware that it has ever come to light and I don’t think anybody is under investigation. The point is that, given the damage that they did to the economy, things like credit default swaps or collateralized-debt obligations shouldn't have been allowed, and it was up to the appropriate government agencies, and ultimately the US Congress to make sure that that was the case. They failed to do it. Yes, Wall Street screwed up, but so did the Congress. It seems to me that one reason that congressmen are so outraged now is to divert attention from their own role in this whole mess.
Senator Bernie,
I have alot of respect for you over the years and I believe that you really do care for the people you represent and I thank you for that even though you do not directly represent me here in Colorado. The problem Senator is that for many years the goals of both the Banking World and the Senate have become one. The interests of Bankers, Wall Street and the government have been alined as the interests of a single entity, The Wealthy! Until our government divests its interest in the Wealthiest of our population, the less likely your goal of a Law against Usury will be enacted by any Congress!!
15% is usury. Any amount of interest that that is greater than the capacity of an economy to grow is usury. Economies do not grow by 15%. 3% could be usury if the economy is not growing at 3%.
But we can't understand this because we are all usurers. How many of you posting here derive income from investments? How many of your retired parents have comfortable lives because of their investment income?
And what is your dream, your "American Dream", if it is not to retire young enough to do only what you want to do in comfort & security without having to struggle for mere survival?
The wealthiest among us grew rich through usury and the poorest were destroyed by it.
Usury is not an archaic "thou shalt not" on a par with the prohibitions in Leviticus. Interest is a hard economic fact. It is the power of money to accumulate value. Money is the measure of the value of production. If the power of money to accumulate value is greater than the power of producers to produce value, an economy ultimately crashes in a deflationary spiral, just as we are doing now.
Your investment income is dwindling to a mere trickle because the economy is not producing at even 1%. It is contracting. People are losing jobs because companies cannot meet their obligations. What are their obligations? To pay usurious interest rates on debt so that you may continue to receive dividends. All you holders of paper equities are getting a haircut whether you need one or not. Except for the Wall Street crowd. Your credit card interest is shooting sky high so that those at the top will not have to get haircuts.
Our economy is a vast payday loan sharking store and we are all debt peons. Except for those at the top to whom we owe money.
If you took economics classes in college, you didn't learn anything about real economics. What you learned was "finance". Finance is a synonym for usury. You learned a bunch of garbage math and in this crisis you are clueless.
Bernie Sanders is also clueless, a good hearted, but clueless individual, a leader of the clueless.
This is the time, crisis time, when we have to re-learn how to think. Start by thinking about interest and what it means.
How about cancelling all the credit card debt altogether? Wipe the slate clean. Fuck 'em. Visa and all their ilk. If they go out of business, oh well. We'll find work for those displaced employees.
The credit card companies swindle the public. But I suppose it's the fault of workers and the poor. After all, they weren't "disciplined" enough with their money. It's ok for the elites to write bad checks though and be subsidized by the middle class.
"Sioux Rose, I agree with you. I am not defending Wall Street, by any means. Their actions might be reprehensible, but it’s not enough to blame the fox for the damage in the henhouse. Maybe the question should be: “who let the henhouse open?”
I think it's the whole damn farm that's the problem. lol.
Phasor, March 26th 9:30am is absolutely right. Reinstating the regulatory framework is the first and most important step. Glass-Steagall, et. al. worked. The framework is more important than any regulation, especially the Rube Goldberg contraption conceived by Timmy G of an uber regulator to monitor the too big to fail club; naturally, at taxpayer expense.
Senator Sanders: Why is there no support for this in Congress? Even Paul Volcker is wrong about this one.
I could swear that in the 60s charging over 10% was usuary. I rmember because I made a $2000 loan from my mother to buy a house and I wanted to make it a good deal for her as it allowed me to own my first home. The maximum interest that I could pay was 10% as over that would have been usuary- Am I correct in this recollection? What happened to this law and why can't we return to this limit?
Lynne Penek-Holden
Usury laws are an authoritarian tradition which should have been abolished along with the tradition of slavery. They are a form of theocracy, based on the religious idea of usury which originally meant the sin of charging any interest whatsoever on a loan. Today's moralists define it as charging excessive interest, but the fact is that "excessive interest" cannot be reasonably defined or determined in terms of an annual percentage rate.
Small-dollar short-term loans - the only type of loan which many people can qualify for - must carry an APR of at least 250 or 300 percent just for the lender to break even on the transaction, because the cost of issuing a loan is not insubstantial and the lender is only collecting interest for a short period of time, not a whole year. Even the nonprofit "payday-loan alternative" offered by Goodwill Industries carries a 252% APR (see GoodMoneyStore.com). But just because a loan carries a relatively high APR, that does not mean it is a ripoff or a bad idea for people who, because they don't have good credit, cannot be approved for a lower-APR loan.
Interest rate caps simply put some lenders out of business and make some types of loans unavailable to the people who want and need them. Loan sharking - defined as the practice of using violence or threats to collect on loans - is itself, to a very large extent, a creation of usury laws.
People who support usury laws have no faith in a free-market economic system and they have no faith in the capacity of adults to make their own decisions. Yes, loans need to be regulated so that they are transparent, so that people are not lied to or deceived in any way. But the price of loans should be regulated by the free market and not Big Brother, secular or religious, wanting to control everything.
If the government can tell a lender how much he or she can charge, then it can also tell every doctor, lawyer and free-lance maid how much he or she can charge as well. And if the government can remove loans, such as payday loans, from the marketplace because some people can't resist the temptation to take out too many, then it can also remove high-fat and high-sugar foods from the marketplace because some people can't resist the temptation to overeat them and become fat.
Obesity is causing way more suffering in America today than people overextended on payday loans, but is Bernie Sanders calling for a cap on the amount of fat and sugar allowed in foods? I doubt it, probably because he uses high-fat and high-sugar foods himself and wants the freedom to decide for himself whether or not he should buy them.
Well, Senator Sanders, why don't you allow that same freedom for the people who choose to take out high-APR loans and who will not be able to borrow money at all if the interest-rate caps you propose should become law? Are you going to take responsibility when people get evicted in the dead of winter and die of pneumonia, when a payday loan would have enabled them to remain in their apartment?
I have nothing against the government helping those in need by increasing taxes and judiciously distributing the funds. But this country was founded on the idea of unalienable rights, of FREEDOM, Senator Sanders, including FREEDOM OF COMMERCE, the right of consenting adults to engage in mutually agreeable economic transactions (that do not involve materially dangerous goods), which neither power-hungry politicians nor a frustrated majority of misguided citizens should be allowed to abridge.
You're too invested in the system. Work in the money biz ?
Ah, yes: Let the 'free market' dictate the cc rates. After all, we're all adults, yes? My ass! If you believe this, then you should also agree that the AIGs are adults,as well- and should be left to drown. Oh, but that would hurt main street. Get a grip on the hypocrisy, ok? There are times when societies have been so sickly manipulated to the extent that adults are encouraged to behave as children- when leaders need to pull the plug, and get things back on track. Allowing cc rate to be dictated by the 'free market'- that very same market that screamed for deregulation of derivatives, etc- is crushing many people right now- completely destroying them. So, you are saying 'let them (the lower class only) eat cake'. Wonderful! Simply wonderful! [Excuse me, but I need to go and hurl now!]
Jon Schultz: "The gov't can tell every doctor...how much to charge" They already do. My chiropractor was denied the right to give a discount for cash because the State said "..it would be unfair to insurance companies."
Credit cards are issued by an oligopoly. Not much free market to destroy there.
However, your point is well taken. "That government is best which governs least". I always thought that was Jefferson. Have recently seen it attributed to Thoreau.
While I agree with the outrage at Wall Street, we might consider the history of deregulation that created the environment that led to our current problems. Consensus points to the Gramm/Leech Bill of 1999 as the pivotal factor creating the feeding frenzy of derivative trading which is legalized gaming for traders who can legally use other peoples cash to place their bets. Much has been said by politicians and talking heads trying to place blame on the cause of our current problems. While Republicans voted lock step with the deconstruction of legal mandates regulating trading, leading to our current situation, it should also be noted that Bill Clinton was the one who signed the legislation into law. (Refer to Gramm/leech on Wikipedia for its history and who voted for it.)
It now seems to me slippery for some politicians and talking heads to place all the blame on one party. Had Clinton elected to veto the legislation, this problem would have never taken root, or festered into the odorous wound it has become.
I commend Sen Sanders efforts to buck the system, but since Democrats and Republican are both in bed with Wall Street, it seems unlikely that a major overhaul is in the making.
I've got three words for all the mental midgets who rant on and on about how third party candidates will never get elected...
Bernie Fucking Sanders...
Jon.Schultz March 26th, 2009 11:51 pm - you don't understand money at all.
Go get'em Bernie!
more about usury and business in this country video link http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01182008/watch.html