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Take America Back From the Banks
Reining in the financial industry's power and greed will be a long, hard-fought war. But it is one that must be fought
The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam war was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of the US Congress to end legal racial discrimination. More recently, the town hall meetings dominated by people opposed to healthcare reform have been a serious roadblock for those pushing reform.
Those disgusted by the bank bailouts, and the bankers who brought us this recession, will have a chance to make their views known when the American Bankers Association has its annual meeting in Chicago this month. A large coalition of labour, community and consumer organisations are organising a protest at this "Showdown in Chicago".
A big turnout at this event can make a real difference. Just to review the scorecard, most of the country is still suffering the fallout from the bankers' irrational exuberance of the housing bubble era. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other forecasters expect the suffering to endure for years to come.
The US unemployment rate is about to cross 10%, with an additional 9 million workers only able to find part-time work. CBO projects that unemployment will not return to normal levels until 2014. Almost 200,000 people are losing their homes every month through foreclosure. Tens of millions of people who had expected a comfortable retirement just saw most of their wealth disappear with the collapse of the housing bubble. State and local governments are being forced to lay off school teachers and fire fighters under the pressure of enormous budget deficits.
But not everyone is suffering. Thanks to the bailout programmes put in place last fall, most of the country's major banks are back on their feet. In fact, in the most recent quarter, bank profits hit a new record high as a share of all corporate profits.
And the banks are sharing their wealth. Many of their top executives and high performers will be getting bonuses this year worth millions of dollars. In some cases the bonuses will be in the tens of millions.
In the meantime, in elite Washington circles people are busy making plans for a national sales tax so that the government can limit the fiscal damage caused by the bankers' recession. A sales tax is of course very regressive, since low- and moderate-income people typically spend the vast majority of their income, while our banker friends will more likely to be able to save some of their income or spend it in other countries where they will not be paying this new sales tax.
To summarise: the bankers wrecked the economy with their greed, ran off with taxpayer dollars in a massive bailout and now plan to raise taxes for the rest of us. If that picture doesn't sound quite right, then go to Chicago.
This is a case where the divisions are not left-right, but of the elite against everyone else. When Congress was debating the Tarp bank bailout last fall, members of Congress were hearing calls from people across the political spectrum who were outraged that their tax dollars were going to the banks that had wrecked the economy. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats ended up voting against this bankers' piñata.
The policies that will rein in the banks: reform of the Federal Reserve Board to make it democratically accountable, a tax on financial speculation to pay for the bankers' mess and restrictions on the bank abuses of consumers that caused the carnage have support from people on both the left and right.
A bill that would require the Fed to disclose what it did with more than $2tn in loans to banks and other financial institutions was originally co-sponsored by Ron Paul and Alan Grayson, one of the most conservative and one of the most progressive members of Congress. Due to public pressure, it now has more than 270 co-sponsors.
This is exactly the sort of alliance that gets the elite worried. Reining in the power of the financial industry will be a long, hard-fought war, but it is one that must be fought. President and Nobel peace prize winner Barack Obama may not have been able to bring the Olympics to Chicago, but everyone who wants to retake our country from the banks can bring their backside there on 25 October.
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23 Comments so far
Show AllEAT THE RICH Let's have a bar-b-que
Lol, Banker on the Barbie:)
Good one!
Is it illegal to advocate revolution against corporations? Lets round em all up and roast em!
Just collecting their heads in a basket is good enough for me.
I'm not too far from the Mexican border, and I understand you can get quite a deal on pikes there these days.
The battle against our privatized monetary system will be orders of magnitude more difficult than the battle against privatized health care. But reforming the Federal Reserve will accomplish nothing since it is their (privately controlled) power to issue currency subject to interest that creates inherent, irreversible and ultimately terminal debt. A currency subject to interest is the true engine of the concentration of wealth. The Fed must be eliminated.
"Control over money creation is an instrument of economic conquest." (Michel Chossudovsky, "Towards a Global Currency? Towards the integration of the Dollar and the Euro?" www.globalresearch.ca)
That the problem is that our monetary system has been privatized is evident to anyone familiar with the history of banking, and of the Fed in particular. Read Ellen Brown's book Web of Debt, for example.
All of the sheeple that showed up in Hyde Park on election day 2008 and showed up in DC on inauguration day 2009 now need to show up for the Bankers Convention in Chicago to demand the change that Obama promised but has proven time and time again that he will not deliver.
Be forewarned that Obama will likely insult those who protest in Chicago just as he insulted the G20 protesters in Pittsburg recently.
Let's use this space to check-in for those attending the three-day Showdown in Chicago. I'm a community organizer with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and we're taking a bus of people from Iowa to meet up with our brothers and sisters in the National People's Action Network, Sunflower, AFL-CIO, UE, SEIU, and more.
David Goodner
Community Organizer
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
2001 Forest Avenue
Des Moines, Iowa 50311
david@iowacci.org
515-282-0484
If a national sales tax is to be, let it include stocks, bonds, and other investments. This would have a fringe benefit of damping unproductive speculation, encouraging people to invest and hold instead of day trading in currency futures.
Closing loopholes would help too - for example, simply closing the cap on Social Security $108,500 cap on taxable income and the total exemption of all 'unearned income' (income from profits, rents, interest, etc.) from both Medicare and Social Security taxation would raise sufficient additional income to fully fund single-payer national health insurance for all Americans with no new taxes. This would also greatly help businesses, unions, and local governments by fully relieving them of health insurance costs.
Re smitty88 October 13th, 2009 9:41 am
Good suggestions all, to which I would add only two items: first, that preferential rates for taxation of capital gains must be abolished---under no fair system would any income be "more equal than others."
Second, while a central bank is necessary to regulate the money supply and facilitate the flow of credit, there is no reason why, except for the influence of self-interested elites, such a bank must be a private, for-profit entity.
Nationalize the Federal Reserve!
The problem is a handful of cranks will turn up at some town hall meeting and coverage will be blanketed to every small town and village across the land like it was representitive of the majority while millions could pour out into the street and threaten to strike and it would be a news blackout.
There is a deliberate reason that the corporate owned media and government, including Obama, ignore the people.
This is where it starts:
No excuses for Obama because that keeps people from facing what is all around them, but they are unwilling to see---that Obama is not on our side--he works against us.
There's an episode of Star Trek NG where a 20th century banker, who was cryogenically preserved, is found and re-awakened. He immediately wants to contact his broker thinking he's going to be rich. Captain Picard proceeds to tell him that in the current century, they've eliminated the NEED for money.
Sure, this sounds far-fetched. But so did manned-flight 150 years ago. Contact visionary companies like DEKA Research and urge them to think big and bold, to come up with technologies that eliminate the NEED for money.
Imagine if a technology was created that allowed us to easily "duplicate" a loaf of bread? (And I'm mostly speaking metaphorically here.) No need for food, no need for oil, no need for bankers and war. And soon thereafter, no need for religion.
"To summarise: the bankers wrecked the economy with their greed..."
Sorry, DB, but that's not entirely accurate.
The banksters - with the overt enabling of our past and present elected so-called 'representatives' - wrecked the economy with their collective uber-greed.
Hence, the spoken, documented truth: "Frankly, they own the place."
Which is why DBs Take Back America plan cannot succeed - who, exactly, are 'we,' and who are 'we' taking back America from? Our banksters and our government have merged. Period.
And when they look out their windows, they see a wholly pacified America still way far away from any sort of even mild revolt threshold...
frank1569: You are so right! Additionally, the tempest in a tea party and other distractions are designed to keep us from getting together as citizens, despite ideological differences. The "no" votes on this bill, should they ever get to vote on it, will illuminate the first wave to be voted out if we, the people, can manage it. On a depressing note, the entire California legislature voted for the electricity "deregulation" and most of them are still there.
So you're saying it's hopeless, don't bother going to Chicago...them's pacifying words. "We" (ordinary citizens) can take America back from concentrated capital by convincing the majority to vote progressives into congress. That requires building movements and making people realize how reactionary "conservatives" really are.
Most economists vote Democrat and only 10% support a flat tax-tell your neighbors.
"Take America Back From the Banks"
Begin by getting money out of politics and ending the revolving door. Are progressive politicians listening? How about a bill to this effect? It couldn't have better public support.
A bill in Congress would be good, in part because it would focus a lot of attention on this. But we should be looking to public referenda in 2010.
Congress will not pass such a bill because EVERY lobbyist in Washington would holler against it. But the popular support is there, and if it gets on a local referendum, it will likely pass no matter who spends what.
If the Congress gets free of the lobbies, they might free the larger bodies of government.
Besides asking them to introduce a bill banning lobbying and revolving doors, let's also ask our progressive pols to introduce a bill to refer decisions on vital issues like this one to the public, direct democratically, by fraud-free referendums.
To build a democracy, the public may have to wrest it from the hands of sold out politicians.
Take America back from the root of all evil:
Watch "Zeitgeist Addendum"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=895026537690187652
and "THE EMPIRE OF 'THE CITY'"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4675077383139148549
And don't forget how much the state plays a role in this. Of course it is great to audit the Fed but it would be better to end it. Many other government programs and departments are also essential to what's gone wrong. And many "progressive" and "liberal" programs. National health care would be one more way to seize the freedoms and income of individuals and force them to support corporations in the way a very wealthy elite class dictates. Don't forget, the Fed was originally supposed to protect the citizens from the "free market." And now look, the citizens are waking up after 100 years of watching the divide in classes grow and many boom and busts that always result in more money going to the wealthy.
But it isn't just the Fed, all of the government programs and departments created in the name of protecting or helping citizens have only taken away their freedom and their money. They should all be audited and all be ended. Then the corporations will have no one to help them maintain their power. It also happens on an international level with the WTO and IMF. Supposedly helping but only robbing the poor. As soon as any politician tells you a new program or new department is going to help you whether Homeland Security or national health care, don't believe it, it is just another scam. Don't ask to audit the Fed and take America back from the banks on the one hand and then hand America to the Big Pharma corporations with national health care on the other. It makes no sense.
It's easy to fall into one of the two factions that pin the blame on either the public or private sector. But the elites can and do infiltrate/corrupt both. So we shouldn't fight over which of the two sectors we think is more vulnerable or prone or dangerous for elites to seize. We should take back BOTH sectors.
First step: take money out of politics.
Second step: educate the citizens.
Third step: make economics simple and real--no reserve banking, a global currency, no balance of payment deficits, no national debts.
Fourth step: manage the economy with democratic input.
Only the government is allowed to create or delete money and is bound to do so in a manner that keeps the value of money stable.
Fifth step: recognize that a sustainable economy in equilibrium is much more desirable than a growth-recession economy that conserves little for the future.
The earth is 4 billion years old and man is a million. Lets live like we expect to be here for at least the next 4 billion years. WOW do we need to conserve and recycle!!
A common source of anger for both left and right would seem to be big banks and Wall Street and their obscene profits and bonuses.
How about some Town Halls about financial reform. Why not harness the anger among all ordinary Americans to put pressue on Congress to take tough action? Many in Congress would have to choose, do they want $$$ from their banking benefactors or do they want votes.