The American people have been taken hostage to a broken system.
It is a system that remains in place to this day.
A system where bank lobbyists have been spending in record numbers to make sure it stays that way.
A system that corrupts the most basic principles of competition and fair play, principles upon which this country was built.
It is a system that so far has forced the taxpayer to provide the banks with the use of $14 trillion from the Federal Reserve, much of the $7 trillion outstanding at the US Treasury and $2.3 trillion at the FDIC.
A system partially built by the very people who currently advise our President, run our Treasury Department and are charged with its reform.
And most stunningly -- it is a system that no one in our government has yet made any effort to fundamentally change.
Like health care, this is a referendum on our government's ability to function on behalf of the American people. Ask yourself how long you are willing to be held hostage? How long will you let our elected officials be the agents of those whose business it is to exploit our government and the American people at any cost?
As hostages -- was there any sum of money we wouldn't have given AIG?
Why did we pay Goldman Sachs and all the other banks 100 cents on the dollar for their contracts with AIG, using taxpayer money, while we forced GM and others to take massive payment cuts?
Why hasn't any of the bonus money paid to the CEOs that built this financial nuclear bomb been clawed back?
And more than anything else -- why does the US Congress refuse to outlaw the most anti-competitive structure known to our economy, one summed up as TOO BIG TOO FAIL?
It has become startlingly clear that we as a country, and I as a journalist, had made a grave error in affording those who built and ran those banks and insurance companies the honorable treatment of being called capitalists. When in fact the exact opposite was true, these people were more like vampires using the threat of Too Big Too Fail to hold us hostage and collect ongoing ransom from the US Government and the American taxpayer.
This was no unlucky accident. The massive spike in unemployment, the utter destruction of retirement wealth, the collapse in the value of our homes, the worst recession since the Great Depression all resulted directly from these actions.
Even with all that -- the only changes that have been made, have been made to prop up and hide the massive flaws on behalf of those who perpetuated them. Still utterly nothing has been done to disclose the flaws in this system, improve it or rebuild it.
Last fall was an awakening for me, as it was for many in our country.
And yet, our Congress has yet to open its eyes, much less do anything about it. In fact conditions have never been better for the banks or worse for the rest of us.
Why is this? Who does our Government work for? How much longer will we as Americans tolerate it? And what, if anything, can we do about it?
As we approach the anniversary of the bailouts for our banks and insurers -- and watch the multi-trillion taxpayer-funded programs at the Federal Reserve continue to support banks and subsidize their multibillion bonus pools, we must ask if our politicians represent the interests of America? Or those who would rob America of its money and its future?
As a country, we must demand that our politicians stop serving those whose business models are based on systemic theft and start serving those who seek to create value for others -- the workers, innovators and investors who have made this country great.
Follow Dylan Ratigan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DylanMSNBC
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/americans-have-been-taken_b_285225.html
Empathy is a rare commodity in those Ivory Towers where fine liquor runs as free as the blood of GI's KIA. Foie gras is served while the suffering of the unwashed masses is merely an figurative credit abstraction. We should be grateful to these mammonites that they let us have anything at all.
Will there be no change until heads are cut for pole decorations?
And why not? Our culture is regressing backwards. We have the present day manifestation of witch trials for Guantanamo prisoners. For us it's wage slavery, if you're lucky. Work houses haven't been invented yet.
Watch Ratigan question an industry lobbyist about this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/29/dylan-ratigan-rips-health_n_303127.html
If only every journalist would try this hard to get one simple straight answer.
But now, with the conservative, corporate-dominated, Supreme Court in place to decide that any campaign finance reform is unconstitutional, I truly do not know how we will move forward. Once we awoke to find we were taken hostage by corporations and their lobbies, our remedies, and our Supreme Court, were taken hostage too.
We, the People, Must enforce this.
I don't know how, but we must.
Public election with mandated free air time to all candidates on the ballot.
It's the only way back to a real democracy.
How is the Federal Reserve System, with its privately held for-profit banks and its status as a government agency that is "independent within government", not a government ensured profit system?
All I know about the Fed is contained in the Wikipedia entry on it.
I've never seen the difference between Lobbying and Bribery. The hard part would be getting rid of it - it would be like convincing Congress to pass a bill to cut their own pay/benefits.
This would permit campaign financing to more properly distinguish between citizens (the people) and corporations.
The idea of corporate personhood is utterly ridiculous since they aren't held accountable in the same way that people are. Sure, they can get sued, but they can't go to jail.
There was some documentary I saw a few years back that asked the question "If corporations were people, what kind of people would they be?". The answer? They'd be sociopaths and psychopaths.
I can't think of the name for the life of me...
Spot on and well said. Thank you Vern.
Well, I really HOPE he does enact change.
Bailout was opposed by 99 percent of population, and yet our "representatives" went for it hook, line and sinker well the regular folks new it was wrong even if not doing it was be strong medicine.
Loved your question about AIG taking "premiums" for financial risk "insurance" for the banks when they all knew darn well AIG could never afford to keep reserves to pay out claims what if what they were insuring against happened, and you asked the straighforward question "Is it theft?"
AIG taking premiums for something they could never cover was theft, and US Treasury making those that bought these fraudulent insurance policies whole is even more criminal.
Totally agree with your great points and thanks for showing the hypocrisy in regards to most businesses and Wall Street.