The American Dream Destroyed
July 15th, 2009Unbridled Greed at Goldman-Sachs
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If there is an issue the American people should become informed about, regardless of political party affiliation or philosophy, it is the extent to which the greedy money managers at the nation’s big banks are destroying the middle class “American dream.”
More from Rolling Stone magazine:
The Great American Bubble Machine
In Debt We Trust is the latest film from Danny Schechter, the Emmy-winning former ABC News and CNN producer. This new hard-hitting documentary investigates why so many Americans are being strangled by debt. It is a journalistic confrontation with what former Reagan adviser Kevin Phillips calls “Financialization” — the “powerful emergence of a debt-and-credit industrial complex.” While many Americans may be “maxing out” on credit cards, there is a deeper story: power is shifting into fewer hands. And with frightening consequences.
There is a scene in this film where Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, was to hold a hearing questioning the big bank managers on what went wrong that led to the need for massive government bailouts with taxpayer money. But he only gives each of them four minutes to make an opening statement, does not allow other senators to ask questions, and adjourns the hearing.
If this happened in Europe, or even Iran, the people would be out in the streets protesting en masse. But not in the U.S., where the people here just seem quite willing to take it up the butt…
I suspect this status quo will not hold forever. The worse the recession gets, the more violent crime will increase. The gated communities and private armies protecting the few rich people left may not be enough at some point. If some fairness is not brought back into the system, at some point we may experience another French-style revolution, where the rich are thrown out into the street and their stuff taken by the masses.
Not that we are advocating that. Right now, the quick fix is to pass a health care reform bill that gives every American health insurance. Second, if the money managers want to avoid catastrophe, the solution is fairly simple: Reduce their salaries by 15 percent and give everybody else a raise. People would then have money to spend and maybe even pay off their credit cards and mortgages, and the economy would begin to recover…
Tags: In Debt We Trust, The American Dream Destroyed, The Great American Bubble Machine, Unbridled Greed at Goldman-Sachs
July 15th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Via e-mail:
RICHARD SHELBY—another fine Alabamian serving his masters!
- Evelyn Rivers
July 15th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
A French-style revolution is not the answer, at least if history is any guide. Following the heady days of the French rebellion against aristocrats and the wealthy, the wealthy, at least, re-established their dominance. And by 1801 there was a whole new aristocracy as well, headed by former revolutionary general Napoleon Bonapart. This era prompted the famous comment by the contemporary Baron de Rothschild that, “The time to buy is when blood is running in the streets.”
From the libertarian left, some suggestions for solutions.
1. People (and other entities) who own stock in corporations, and similarly fictitious entities allowed by law, are relieved of personal responsibility – except loss of investment – for wrongs committed by those entities.
Corporations and their kin were established for this very reason: to allow investors to escape liabilities they would otherwise have. Solution: End this and return to the common law standard of egalitarian liability. Think corporations, banks, etc. would clean up their acts? You betcha. Tomorrow morning if not by midnight.
2. Establish civil liability for the top ranks of government bureaucrats. Currently, most senior civil servants cannot be sued for injuries by ordinary citizens, provided their actions were taken “in good faith” and so forth. This would help re-enforce the salutory effects of (1) above.
3. Transform most administrative regulation into common law regulation, with permanently empaneled grand juries in every US judicial district empowered to indict within hours of charges being filed. Establish an ombudsman office in each US judicial district, staffed by trial attorneys, to bring actions on behalf of ordinary citizens in all the formerly-administrative-regulation cases.
4. Anyone seen the Borden’s cheese commercials? They make the point that Borden’s is owned and operated by dairy farmer cooperatives, so all the profits go back to the real producers, i.e., the farmers.
Credit unions, which are also legally cooperatives, are known for being much better places to have your money than commercial banks. For starters, each depositor is an equal owner and the “profits” come back to the same in interest and other ways.
Cooperatives should be encouraged throughout the economy, particularly for productive industry. I think that, for instance, if GM became an employee-owned cooperative it would be exceptionally successful within a few years.
As a libertarian, even though coming from the left, I naturally support a free market. However, what we have today is not a free market but a kind of guild mercantilism that favors the wealthy, the politically-well-connected and their power elite allies. From the tax code to administrative regulation to the in-bed-together-with-government rent seeking, the system is stacked against working people and small business owners. It is stacked exceptionally thick, in fact.
These are just a few ideas. We need to really think out of the box in order to fundamentally turn things around, I believe, and not just put bandages on serious wounds and hope they heal.
Such a program would, essentially, be revolutionary in that it would be centered on the value and dignity of the human being. And yes, I’d do a series of cooperatives to provide health insurance for all those currently uninsured, funded, at least for the foreseeable future, through taxes. But I would plan to devolve that system into something totally operated by cooperatives answerable to their own members.
Oops, that leaves out Congress and bureaucrats and they just don’t like that scenario. But that’s where all the problems begin.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I’m just sayin’…
Even the publisher of the Birmingham News recently cut his salary by 15 percent.
We can either pass health care, cut salaries and raise wages, or the situation is going to get much worse.
If that leads to a larger deficit, we totally normalize relations with Cuba and legalize marijuana and tax it.
Problems fixed. No need for an elaborate plan. But that’s too easy and too close to common sense, and it cuts out a lot of the greedy who love to feel like they deserve their wealth and everybody else should be a serf.
Me? I just want to make the heist film with Sean Penn to steal back the Bush gold (stolen in Iraq) from the vault on that 98,000 acre ranch in Paraguay. It would be part comedy, especially since you would have to include the Rev. Sun Yung Moon, who lives on the ranch next door : )