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Put Wealth on Trial
Congress needs to investigate the reasons behind the economic collapse -- the way Ferdinand Pecora probed the '29 market crash, and made tycoons confess their financial sins.
For policy wonks near and far, the celebrity of the hour isn't Susan Boyle, the Scottish church marm who belted out "I Dreamed a Dream" with the voice of an airy angel, or ex-Somali pirate hostage Richard Phillips, or Carrie Prejean, the Miss USA contestant from California who's against gay marriage because the Bible tells her so.
No, it's Ferdinand Pecora.
Who's he, you may ask, and guess that maybe he once played infield for the Dodgers or sang Faust at the Metropolitan Opera. But back in the '30s, during the depths of the Great Depression, Ferdinand Pecora emerged as an unlikely hero, leading a sensational Senate investigation of what caused the '29 market crash.
Over the last few weeks, public pressure fueled by rage and pain has built for a similar probe of the causes of our current economic collapse, an inquiry that will search for real answers going beyond the hearings that have been held so far -- more heat and wasted fire than illumination. People want to know what really happened, and how we can keep it from happening again.
Congress is finally getting the message. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a crowd at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, "I want to initiate... the equivalent of what happened in the '30s. They had something that was called the Pecora Commission," and this week the Senate passed two amendments to anti-fraud legislation, one calling for an independent investigation, similar to the 9/11 Commission; the other for an internal select committee -- like the Senate's Watergate hearings in 1973.
All of this has arisen not only from the public's anger but renewed interest in what happened when Ferdinand Pecora took the job as chief counsel to the Senate Banking Committee in 1933. He was a street-smart immigrant from Sicily, the son of a cobbler, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney with a memory for facts, figures, dates and names that proved the undoing of a Wall Street banking world gone berserk with greed.
Under threat of subpoena and under oath, one tycoon after another -- including J.P. Morgan, Jr., of the House of Morgan and Charles "Sunshine Charley" Mitchell, chairman of First National City Bank (now Citigroup) -- was hauled before the committee and grilled relentlessly by Pecora.
In June 1933, he even made the cover of Time magazine. "Wealth on trial" reads the headline inside, where the investigator was described in ethnic stereotypes of the day as "the kinky-haired, olive-skinned, jut-jawed lawyer from Manhattan." To their shock, the pompous financiers, unaccustomed to having their actions or integrity questioned by anyone, much less some pipsqueak, foreign-born legalist who made 255 dollars a month, were no match for his cross-examination skills.
They found themselves confessing to a litany of financial sins, including discount stock offerings to VIP "preferred" customers (among them, banker cronies, Charles Lindbergh and General "Black Jack" Pershing, as well as Washington insiders, including former President Coolidge and a Supreme Court justice), repackaging bad loans and selling them as bonds to the unsuspecting, and non-payment of income tax.
The Pecora hearings resulted in 12,000 pages of transcripts that are still a primary source for historians of the Great Crash, and important New Deal legislation that for the first time regulated the high-handed, free-wheeling banking industry and protected the public from its excesses -- including the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (which established the Securities and Exchange Commission -- Pecora was one of its first commissioners) and the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, which erected a firewall between commercial and investment banking -- a wall torn down during the Clinton administration, leading to much of our trouble today.
A biography of Ferdinand Pecora is being written by Michael Perino, a professor of securities regulation at St. John's University. He was interviewed on this week's edition of Bill Moyers Journal, along with Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund who now teaches at MIT's Sloan School of Management.
Reading the transcripts of the Pecora hearings, Perino told my colleague Bill Moyers, "You can't help but hear the echoes of what's going on today."
Simon Johnson noted that right now, "These financial issues are complex and just like Mr. Pecora did, you need to find some way to crystallize it." He suggested that for a 21st century version of the Pecora hearings to succeed the focus should be on "predatory practices," especially the marketing of home mortgages and credit cards. Perino adds that another important area of inquiry would be "the role that credit agencies played in this entire process, particularly in the creation of... derivative instruments."
As plans for a real, Pecora-style investigation emerge, three things seem clear. A general counsel and staff must be engaged who possess a bulldog tenacity and legal skills similar to Pecora's. "You have to have a strong general counsel," Johnson said, "who asks the tough questions and who doesn't let you off the hook. You've got to push it through."
Some have suggested Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law professor and current head of the Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing the Troubled Assets Relief Program -- TARP. As Johnson notes, "She comes with expertise... the right combination of qualifications," but perhaps lacks the prosecutorial ability necessary. Patrick Fitzgerald, the Federal prosecutor in the Scooter Libby and Rod Blagojevich cases has been mentioned.
Another possibility: New York State's ambitious Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has been an outspoken critic of Wall Street and Washington during the current crisis. Just this week he sent a letter to the Senate and House banking committees detailing allegations that Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke forced Bank of America's merger with Merrill Lynch.
Second, an independent commission with subpoena power is the way to go; not yet another congressional investigation led by Senators and Representatives who have received political contributions from the very companies they'll be hauling in for questioning. As the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics has reported, for the last 20 years, the financial services industry has been the largest campaign contributor in every federal election cycle. In the last two years alone, individual and political action committee donations from Wall Street totaled $463.5 million.
This creates, Simon Johnson said, "a potential conflict of interest. I think that's why setting up an independent, bipartisan commission with various... technical experts, people with a deep background in finance... makes sense.
"... Really drilling down is going to show you perhaps some things that were criminal, I'm not saying very many, but a lot of things that when you shine this light on them -- a very, very bright light -- they look inappropriate, unethical, or at least [are] things we're not comfortable with going forward."
Finally, unlike his opposition to an independent commission investigating allegations of torture, President Obama needs to get involved immediately and publicly back an independent Pecora-style commission's work. According to Michael Perino, "Roosevelt was a big booster for the [Pecora] hearings. He met secretly with Pecora on a number of occasions," as well as the committee chairmen.
Obama, on the other hand, may have spent too much time around University of Chicago free market economists when he taught constitutional law there. He seems more inclined to salve the egos of financial titans than to challenge them, and he's clearly smitten with his chief economics adviser Larry Summers, who struck it rich on Wall Street, and with the likes of Robert Rubin, who appears to have spawned half the people Obama has put in charge of the banking crisis. Summers and Rubin were both, ahem, witnesses at the execution when Glass-Steagall was pushed out the window.
Nonetheless, President Obama "is the key to the whole situation," Simon Johnson said; he has to insist on "a lot of openness." Michael Perino noted, "There's got to be strong political support behind these hearings or they're likely to devolve into an academic exercise that doesn't accomplish very much."
It may already be too late. Simon Johnson says the banking industry is pretty confident they're already won. "They got the bailout, they got the money they needed to stay in business. They got a vast line of credit from the taxpayer," he said. "... Their position is, 'Look, if you want a recovery, if you want to get your economy back, you gotta be nice to us.' I'm afraid that the government has blinked...
"They were too big to fail... Now they're way too big to fail. Next time... they may be too big to rescue."
Ferdinand Pecora, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
- Posted in
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52 Comments so far
Show AllObama's US Treasury appointments, his failure to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and his taxpayer-funded giveaways to the financial industry criminals who caused the meltdown, all represent tacit approval of the crimes the financial industry has committed over the past 30 years and continues to commit.
You cannot mitigate the crimes, the problems and the systemic flaws until you acknowledge their existence. Not only is Obama not acknowledging that crimes, problems and flaws exist, he continues to enable them.
I'm not certain, but I do not think Obama has the power to fire Bernanke. His term does not expire until 2010. In my opinion, Bernanke is a big step up from Greenspan, although that's not exactly a strong vote of confidence. If you want change in a hurry, build yourself a time machine.
I consider myself a humanist . . . and certainly see no difference between
communism nor capitaism.
In fact, there's an old Russian joke which goes like this --
Q: What's the difference between Capitalism and Communism?
A: Under Capitalism man exploits man
Under Communism it's just the opposite
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Not everyone knows. Not everyone appreciates.
Even when such things are published, the information just bleeds slowly out into the population, bleeds torpid with the layers of denial.
An investigation into the ethical behavior of the banks and the very rich is one thing that must be done to pass legislation to prevent a reoccurance of the disaster as we did in the first great depression. But then of course that great democratic president billy boy repealed the preventive legislation.
We must TAX THE RICH! Ever since Ronald Ray gun the taxes have been lowered on the vastly rich to help them rob us more. Got to tax the bastards and stop allowing them to put their bucks in non profit organizations that work to help the rich get richer. Some little aid may be given to some very few poor people but mainly the effect is to allow government to ignore the needs of the people. We need the rich to pay taxes and those funds are then available to be spent at the direction of the people to serve the needs of the people. (that does imply that our elected officials will heed the desires of the people which is rarely the case...but still...we gotta try)
We are in deep guano, and you know it. We need funds to get people back to work at decent wages---surely a 8 hour day should put a person over the poverty level. Tax the rich, and up the inheiritance taxes. The rich got the bucks made from the bounty of the earth and the work of the people. Tax the rich!!
No one in this nation should be allowed to be a billionaire. We need to share the wealth--as Huey Long said years ago. They killed him you know. Another of those single crazed gunmen. Seems to happen often when the wealthy feel some threat to their rapacious greed.
A Revolution would help. Will anything else?
Many things would, but the powers that be will stand in their way.
While the US self-destructs, as wealth concentrates and the population grows and jobs are outsourced, the standard of living will continue to decline.
Marx said so and we are experiencing it in the present tense-No, things will continue to polarize, the wealthy getting more so as an increasing number of Americans share less. Until the NEW poor take back by force the means of production, the land, the wealth. Revolution.
As the ship sinks, a process that will take a few more decades, words will become irellevant relative to obvious truths. Increasing hunger and poverty and misery for most, but increased wealth & opulence for the very very few-The US will have the first capitalist-industrial revolution.
Roll your cigarettes on Red Star, thinner and burns better than Izvestia or Pravda.
To "The Motor Of History." To Revolution.
Hi Red Tide, The Red Star was the Soviet military newspaper during WWII. It was on page 429, 2nd par. of The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan, a detailed historical account of Berlin in the Spring 1945 that I read,
Captain Sergei "Golbov took out of his tunic pocket a folded copy of the newspaper Red Star, carefully tore off a small strip of the paper, shook some tobacco onto it and rolled a cigarette. Everyone used Red Star paper; it was thinner and seemed to burn better than Pravda or Izvestia.
It just sounded so cool.
Up In Smoke RT!
Sioux Rose
Seems the blueprint for everything that ails the banking-bridge-to-Wall St "industry" is already in plain sight, as were the remedies for ensuring that another Depression not recur. Isn't it mostly a matter of reinstating The Securities Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and the Glass-Steagall Banking Act? The "reformers" who took away the levees betted the waters would never rise in spite of evidence to the contrary.
I'd like to see heads role, and persons held accountable; but mostly, I'd like to see some sane parameters put back into place to rein in the banks and their lust for speculation with the public's money.
Try this on for size...for a wake-up call....very well researched and documented.
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/Collateral_Damage_911.pdf
This one too, angryoldman -- the cause & results of the economic crash & related to 911 with many charts of the economic picture right after The Fed did away with regulations on the afternoon or the following morning of 911.
www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/Collateral_Damage_Part_II_26122008.pdf
and E.P. Heidner's work also on:
Analysis of Bailout Funding
www.scribd.com/doc/10945321/Analysis-of-Bailout-Funding19012008
read it and weep,
/cm
Thanks, Cee,...I had actually read and printed both of these, but chose to post the first and gauge the response. Let's face it, this kind of revelation can scare many sleeples away, eh?
I must admit, that this particular false flag was masterfully done, but with enough rough edges to alert anyone really paying attention. Problem is, I fear many will not even take the time to read this much material.
The capacity of the masses to absorb bullcrap via the complicit MSM never ceases to astonish me.
Thanks for the links . . .
MIHOP
Throw the TVs out --
If you've read Votescam - The Stealing of America which
I discovered about 10 years or more ago, you realize that
the election/computer steals go back to the mid/late 1960's.
The large computers used by MSM to report and predict/"call"
elections came in first along with the odd crashes and huge
jumps in votes -- increases for less favored candidates and
decreases for the favored candidates.
As the investigators concluded, corporate-media was playing
a leading role in election steals even then.
IMO, every election back to Nixon/Humphrey* is in question where
there was a GOP "win."
http://www.constitution.org/vote/votescam__.htm
The book -- or most of it can be read on line --
and I think used copies are available for just a few bucks.
Be careful that you get an unabridged book with ALL pages still there!
* Coincidentally, that was just about the time we were passing
The Voting Rights Act.
Additionally, the reporters had just passed information on to the
Democratic National Committee about the computer steals as the time of
the Watergate break-ins.
'
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
From an older thread to which I just replied..reposted here...
As I said on the other thread, I have read these articles. As you, I was astounded by the magnitude and depth of the crimes. It is overwhelming, but not insurmountable. And, as you, I doubt any president has the fortitude to reveal something of this nature. I have no doubt that any revelation of that nature would serve to bring this governemnt down. That in itself may not be a bad thing, as we know this system was never meant to benefit the common person. BUT, since this expose' will not occur short of some people's revolution, I find myself returning to the place I started. And that is to ask anyone who will listen to join in an effort to expose the lies of 9/11 and re-open an independent and international investigation. It's a place to start
Ray Berthiaume
I tried to get this site but got this message: Redirect Loop. Firefox has detected...
In the mean time Jobs with Justice is fielding a letter writing campaign to NY state officials urging support for historic legislation that would provide protections for domestic workers; and seeking to set a precedent for labor standards in OUR states:
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/domestic?rk=g7v0jJdqohKcE
We need prosecutions not just investigations. Pecora's investigations did not lead to one prosecution? Mitchell lost his job.
Perino sounded like an apologist for capitalism. He kept saying we don't need witch hunts. The banksters have impoverished thousands if not millions through greed and fraud. How many people have died? But we must be soft on the banksters.
"Really drilling down is going to show you perhaps some things that were criminal, I'm not saying very many, but a lot of things that when you shine this light on them -- a very, very bright light -- they look inappropriate, unethical, or at least [are] things we're not comfortable with going forward."
I missed this part of the interview. So I guess Johnson is an apologist for the banksters too. I'm wary of anything he says considering he's an IMF man. Perhaps some things were criminal? Gimme a break Simon. Impoverish and destroy thousands if not millions of live but PERHAPS some of it was criminal. Stick up a gas station for a couple hundred dollars and you will likely go to jail but steal billions and trillions and then threaten destruction and you get off with a bundle of loot from the treasury.
If I remember correctly both of Moyers' guests towed the party line saying all this stuff is too complex for most to understand. I think that's far from the truth. It's just not been explained well. Any student who could pass a trigonometry or calculus class could understand it if it were explained properly. How will anybody know that 2+2=4 if they never learned to count?
This last Journal was the worst I've seen Bill Moyers do in months. He needs to get Glenn Greenwald on again and it would really be nice if he got Jeremy Scahill on at the same time. I'm curious as to how well those two guys would like each other. Nader would be another good guest. I've not seen him on the Journal yet.
Everything that has happened has already been crystallized and explained perfectly: "Shock Doctrine" - Naomi Klein. It's all there. And it's almost scarey to see just how much of a repeat of the past we've been going through here in the US since Reagan.
You are correct in naming Ms. Klein and her thinking in 'Shock Doctrine...' The majority of the shock has occurred under Bush wanker Jr. Senor Clinton helped with his Arkansas mentality for repealing Glass-Stengall. That action opened the door for Bush wanker to secretly construct his going away present for the probability of a Democrat president, which he unleashed on Sept. 28 I believe was the date. So he had plenty of time and motive to act collusively with the investment banks and the larger banks to hand this criminal act to us the American sheeple who just turned over in bed and said, "BAAAAA, BBBAAAAA."
Progressive taxation has never worked. "Them with the gold makes the rules".
Cap wealth/power with a yearly referendum on allowable net worth that establishes a wealth cap high enough to preserve the profit motive, but low enough to prevent an oligarchy from forming.
Wealth cap excesses can be given away, but only to people, not to organizations of any kind.
The most common fantasy among America's 300 million people is being filthy rich. Wealth has as much chance of being put on trial as George Wanker Bush does for torture.
Glad to hear that "Wealth has as much chance of being put on trial as George Wanker Bush does for torture".
That allows me to predict (not hope) that GW Bush will eventually stand trial for torture, though war crimes or lying the country into war, or ..., would do just as well. I say this while observing that more and more of the 300 million people are waking up and becoming somewhat aware of the problems caused by the concentration of wealth and power in relatively few hands in America.
Inheritance limited to one million per individual. Wealth limited to five million total per family, one million per single. The rest confiscated and distributed justly. If the rich object, hang them.
ezeflyer and godistwaddle advocate wealth-caps. sane good thinking.
Senor Shibilikov correctly notes most of our populace fantasize and dream not about world peace, an end to pestilence famine or misery on Earth, but about themselves with ever more and more and more.
For them, wealth caps will be a Devil's idea,
Our hope lies in the ever greater, now increasing quickly number of Americans that want to cut the throats of the rich. But not on the Persian rugs.
Or maybe tomorrow the .01+1% will just decide, "Damn, inequality in America! Here, I'm moving to the ghetto, fifty families can come live in each of my nine mansions." Naahhh, by tomorrow they will all be 5% wealthier and 50,000 more Americans will be homeless.
As Thomas Jefferson once said:
"The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction... I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity... is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
Here's a great "Guns and Butter Interview" of financial expert and historian Dr. Michael Hudson titled "Financial Barbarians At the Gate." Give it a listen!
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22490.htm.
What would Hezbollah do in this situation?
GreenDagon,
Hezbollah does not have to worry about it. They provide social services and run schools and hospitals for the poor so they have the popular support of the people.
What concepts-
Why just imagine if the US ran schools & hospitals in every country we currently have bases in!
"Why just imagine if the US ran schools & hospitals in every country we currently have bases in!"
It would be cheaper, too.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
"Money doesn't talk, it swears!" --- R. Zimmerman
I was jarred by the article's title: "Wealth on Trial". This makes about as much sense as fighting a war against terror. What court are you going to hold the trial in? What laws did wealth break?
I don't see wealth in the abstract as a bad thing. What's bad is the concentration of wealth in too few hands, something that's happening around the world and in the US in particular.
concentrated wealth = concentrated power = plutocracy = the end of democracy
As several commentators have said, too many Americans dream of being wealthy and a huge percentage think they're going to become wealthy.
Jesus was no fan of the wealthy or the pursuit of wealth: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (mammon = money)
We could use a second coming. Short of that I think the US is doomed. I expect though that if Jesus reappeared, America's Christians would crucify him again.
"I expect though that if Jesus reappeared, America's Christians would crucify him again."
Maybe, if they could get their hands on him. But I think it likely that if the Christian hero Jesus had come back in the last few years, the CIA would have noticed that he was an odd and suspicious character, particularly if he had begun to attract a following, then kidnapped him, waterboarded him with extreme prejudice, and then, through extraordinary rendition, made him disappear into some third world prison, never to be heard from again. Damn, maybe Jesus did come back already. How would we know?
check the psychiatric wards, for both the messiah and her following.
actually considering the fate of humanity, the psych ward option is seeming more attractive everyday.
...peace...
Wealth is not inherently wrong. Wealth earned ethically is to be commended. And, indeed, is commended. But when wealth is earned through manipulation of laws, through sweat shops for cheap 50 cent a day labor and 14-16 hour days with nothing to protect them when they get injured on the job, sick, etc. then it is only required of us as conscious fellow humans to say, "No more of this!" The more that say it, the less chance it has to expand and devour lives. Screw and Tatoo Nike, et al. Drive them out of oregon, California. Tell Gates to stop sending income money to Nevada to not have to pay taxes on $300,000,000. Not to mention the billions taken from state governments due to off shore accounts (not Microsoft as far as I know). Those changes need to come from Congress and the pres and the judicial. But I won't hold my breathe. We'll roll over and BBBAAAAA ourselves to sleep.
Yes, but remember that Jesus also said, "The stench of the stinking corpses of bankers hanged from lamp-posts all over the United States is a sweet aroma in the nostrils of the LORD."
hold your horses everybody - what tools are available today to do enything about anything
//edweg
"hold your horses everybody - what tools are available today to do enything about anything"-//edweg
Matches.
Why fear the darkness when you have matches.
Salon and other liberal media bring novel insights to the elites' enterprises of excess, highlighting Pecora's role in the 1930s and such. But many of us saw the writing on the wall past eight years, when Darth Viper and his cabal effectively instituted a deregulation bonanza across all sectors in spring of 2001, that is attempting to propagate still today. Salon is just distracting us from our own intuitions with these history lessons. What's relevant? Darth Viper's cabal was and still is enabled by the Demok party, which calculated that it would achieve power by merely standing aside while the cabal drove this society, and others, into the ground. Top Demoks, and Repuks, AND their elite masters, ought to go to jail, several hundred of them, maybe thousands.
Nancy P. starts talking a "Commission" at a collection of richfilth animals at the Commonwealth Club - darlin' its as 'fixed' as the Black Sox at the World Series in 1919. This animal is a War Criminal and a Torturer - and she knows it - and everybody who wants to know knows it. She should hang like we hung Sadaam or Goering but we won't. Oh yeah, she's gonna have a Pecora Commission. Oh yeah, of course. Could I have another glass of Kool-Aid please? This time, can I have the purple Kool-Aid? We are led by animals and war criminals who have committed crimes against Humanity. Take it in. Deal with it. Then look at the animals once again. They will never look the same.
You are absolutely correct. Her re-election was the most dumbfounded among two or three other California races I witnessed again. As a 62 year old native and the recipient of responses from these individuals, I have a hard time holding my stomach.
Dogleg, we are past time for "holding" it in - letterrip, holding it doesn't seem to gave gotten the desired response.
Agreed. Californians have lost their progressive intuitions, and now appear more regressive than Kansasans.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
You insult animals.
Sara: You're an animal
Manny: No. Worse. Human.
- Runaway Train, 1985
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
"and this week the Senate passed two amendments to anti-fraud legislation, one calling for an independent investigation, similar to the 9/11 Commission"
No wonder the Senate would like to have an investigation based on the model of the 9/11 Commission. This sort of bipartisan cover-up (framed as an 'independent investigation') has worked out quite nicely for them and they are quite sure they can pull it off once again.
"They found themselves confessing to a litany of financial sins, including discount stock offerings to VIP "preferred" customers (among them, banker cronies, Charles Lindbergh and General "Black Jack" Pershing, as well as Washington insiders, including former President Coolidge and a Supreme Court justice), repackaging bad loans and selling them as bonds to the unsuspecting, and non-payment of income tax."
As the "conspiracy" theorists have always said, defrauding the citizens of the United States has extended from Wall Street to all "three" branches of government.
With extremely low confindence in large financial institutions and in government, policies that reward "responsible", efficient businesses are sorely needed. In addition, the lack of clarity, transparency and accountability with the $$bailouts is suggesting "business as usual". As such, people are moving their money out of big banks and putting it into smaller banks and credit unions that don't gamble with their money but use it to build their communities.
What we don't need is another "Errors & Omissions" commission like the one created to investigate 911.
I may be wrong, but I feel the whole structure of the economy, both global and local, is about to change dramatically. Whether it will lead to total chaos or a sane society is wholly up to us. Initially, though, it is clear that there will be much pain and suffering, primarily because those at the top refuse to let go. If the structure does hold up, this generation and the next will be working to pay back those trillions the banksters stole.
Right wingers make money every way they can, illegal, immoral, unethical, and society-ruining ways included. More logical and reasonable people like to have investigations all the time.
However, these investigations, if not followed up with real prohibitions and prevention of unethical and society-ruining ways of making money, are basically a waste of time, regardless of any feel good overlay.
A society as ruined as (and as ruinous toward other countries as) the United States needs far more than investigations and hearings.
Obama is either a puppet on a string or a dumb fool for thinking that it's alright for huge corporations to be too big to fail and for them to be able to hold the economy and the society hostage.
The huge corporations have been speaking from on high to the common people: "A bailout for us or your economy dies..." And Obama has been obeying their commands. But laugh out loud, what a mockery of the concept of the free market.
A Two Step Approach Us To Bring About The Nationalization Of Banking & Finance
Step One
The word is spread over the Internet that beginning on, say, May 1, everyone
who's for turning banking & finance into public utilities is to join
a mass protest outside of the closest Bank of America or Citibank
Step Two
The mass protests continue, Monday-Saturday (10 am to 4 pm) until President
Barack Hussein Obama caves to the pressure & calls for nationalization.
Why will said plan work when previous protests haven't?
Because daily protests allow for momentum to build, as per the various successful "color" revolutions in Eastern Europe. The traditional U.S. style one day rally simply doesn't allow for the build-up of the whatever the critical amount of energy that's necessary to bring about change.
What everyone seems to miss in all this discussion is the fundamental problem behind all this. The problem is the Federal Reserve system promulgated when - 1910? - check it out. Designed to protect bankers worldwide, a system that has led us to all the financial disasters ever since. Don't look to the politicians for any relief - they are paid by the bankers, so why should they do anything about it? If only there was somebody with the balls of a Pecora today to delve into the insidious, nefarious actions of the banking establishment. The bunch that Obama picked is certainly not the crew to do this since they are all part and parcel of the same cabal, one of my two quibbles with the President.
As Eduardo Galeano put it in another context: "In hard times, democracy is a crime against [capitalism]."