(Photo: Mike Mozart/flickr/cc)
Apr 16, 2017
In an insightful song about outlaws, Woody Guthrie wrote this verse: "As through this world I travel / I see lots of funny men / Some'll rob you with a 6-gun / Some with a fountain pen."
The fountain pens are doing the serious stealing these days.
For example, while you'd get hard time in prison for robbing a bank at gunpoint, bankers who rob customers with a flick of their fountain pens (or a click of their computer mouse) get multimillion-dollar payouts.
They usually escape their crimes unpunished -- but not unscathed. After all, it's their constant, egregious, gluttonous thievery that's made "banker" a four-letter word in America, synonymous with immoral, self-serving behavior.
For example, Wells Fargo, our country's biggest consumer bank, has gotten away with paying some fines for stealing millions of dollars from customers in its notorious "fake accounts" scheme.
But it hasn't escaped the wrath of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia.
This feisty order of nuns, which holds a block of Wells Fargo stock, is infuriated by the rank immorality of its bank's executives. The sisters are pushing a shareholders' proposal demanding a full accounting of the "root causes" of the malicious fraud perpetuated on vulnerable depositors.
Unsurprisingly, the bank's aloof and arrogant board of directors, which had silently presided over the fraud for years, opposes any such meaningful probe. Such recalcitrance only intensifies the public's outrage and cynicism toward out-of-control banksters.
But the giant worries less about its public image than it does about the reality an in-depth investigation would expose -- namely, that our nation's dominant banks have not only become too big to fail and too big to jail, but too big to manage and control.
To stop that thievery, they must be broken up.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion" (1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
In an insightful song about outlaws, Woody Guthrie wrote this verse: "As through this world I travel / I see lots of funny men / Some'll rob you with a 6-gun / Some with a fountain pen."
The fountain pens are doing the serious stealing these days.
For example, while you'd get hard time in prison for robbing a bank at gunpoint, bankers who rob customers with a flick of their fountain pens (or a click of their computer mouse) get multimillion-dollar payouts.
They usually escape their crimes unpunished -- but not unscathed. After all, it's their constant, egregious, gluttonous thievery that's made "banker" a four-letter word in America, synonymous with immoral, self-serving behavior.
For example, Wells Fargo, our country's biggest consumer bank, has gotten away with paying some fines for stealing millions of dollars from customers in its notorious "fake accounts" scheme.
But it hasn't escaped the wrath of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia.
This feisty order of nuns, which holds a block of Wells Fargo stock, is infuriated by the rank immorality of its bank's executives. The sisters are pushing a shareholders' proposal demanding a full accounting of the "root causes" of the malicious fraud perpetuated on vulnerable depositors.
Unsurprisingly, the bank's aloof and arrogant board of directors, which had silently presided over the fraud for years, opposes any such meaningful probe. Such recalcitrance only intensifies the public's outrage and cynicism toward out-of-control banksters.
But the giant worries less about its public image than it does about the reality an in-depth investigation would expose -- namely, that our nation's dominant banks have not only become too big to fail and too big to jail, but too big to manage and control.
To stop that thievery, they must be broken up.
Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion" (1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
In an insightful song about outlaws, Woody Guthrie wrote this verse: "As through this world I travel / I see lots of funny men / Some'll rob you with a 6-gun / Some with a fountain pen."
The fountain pens are doing the serious stealing these days.
For example, while you'd get hard time in prison for robbing a bank at gunpoint, bankers who rob customers with a flick of their fountain pens (or a click of their computer mouse) get multimillion-dollar payouts.
They usually escape their crimes unpunished -- but not unscathed. After all, it's their constant, egregious, gluttonous thievery that's made "banker" a four-letter word in America, synonymous with immoral, self-serving behavior.
For example, Wells Fargo, our country's biggest consumer bank, has gotten away with paying some fines for stealing millions of dollars from customers in its notorious "fake accounts" scheme.
But it hasn't escaped the wrath of the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia.
This feisty order of nuns, which holds a block of Wells Fargo stock, is infuriated by the rank immorality of its bank's executives. The sisters are pushing a shareholders' proposal demanding a full accounting of the "root causes" of the malicious fraud perpetuated on vulnerable depositors.
Unsurprisingly, the bank's aloof and arrogant board of directors, which had silently presided over the fraud for years, opposes any such meaningful probe. Such recalcitrance only intensifies the public's outrage and cynicism toward out-of-control banksters.
But the giant worries less about its public image than it does about the reality an in-depth investigation would expose -- namely, that our nation's dominant banks have not only become too big to fail and too big to jail, but too big to manage and control.
To stop that thievery, they must be broken up.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.