Six Steps To Dis-Empowering Wall Street
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Dick Durbin summed up the plain and ugly truth for us: the banks "are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And frankly own the place."
It's time for the rest of us to declare these big banks politically and morally insolvent, and foreclose on their ownership of DC. The question is how to do it.
Here are six steps toward dis-empowering Wall Street:
1. We need to create a big new coalition which becomes the center of gravity on the banking issue, in the same way that Health Care for America Now has become such a center on the drive for progressive health care reform. I envision this as a combination of national organizations and networks, and the grassroots activists like the folks who have been organizing at A New Way Forward. National groups that might be interested labor unions; consumer groups (many of which are already quite active on this issue), broader progressive movement organizations like USAction, ACORN, Campaign for America's Future, and Center for Community Change; neighborhood organizing networks like Industrial Areas Foundation, National Peoples' Action, and Gamaliel.
2. We need the best and brightest thinkers on this issue -- people like Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, Rob Johnson, William Greider, George Soros, and Leo Hindery -- to come together and work through a Plan B, an alternative path to the one being taken now.
3. We need to press forward aggressively on passing public financing of campaigns, because without that happening, the power of the banks will remain overwhelming even if we do convince the Obama administration to go a new way.
4. We should support and encourage the kind of investigative journalism projects on banking that Huffingtonpost and Atlantic Philanthopies are supporting through the Huffingtonpost Investigative Fund.
5. Progressives at the national and local level should reach out to community bankers and savings and loans. They might not all agree with us, but I'm guessing the broad majority are sick to death of the power of the biggest banks.
6. Speaking of which, we should start a nationwide movement to switch our deposits from the big banks into community banks and the savings and loans. I don't think most people like giving their money to people who are destroying our economy and democracy.
Let the movement begin.
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Awesome! we all vent here, there's a lot of energy we need to direct somewhere constructive...
LET THE MOVEMENT BEGIN!
The best solution is a Constitutional Amendment calling for lobbying reform, political contribution reform, credit card reform, a change in congressional representative terms to 4 years in order to stop the constant running for office, and as someone in California suggested, in response to my blog, denying rights of personhood to corporations, both public and private.
Check out my article on why "We need help from the ACLU to regain control of our nation from a bank seizure" and the response:
http://pragmaticstatistic.blogspot.com/2009/05/we-need-help-from-aclu-to-regain.html#comments
This I assume would work via the states rights protected under the constitution to petition government, similar to that of the early 1980s when communities across the nation sent proclaimations to Washington demanding a reduction in nuclear proliferation. If I understand the way this works correctly, if enough states pass a a Constitutional Amendment, it becomes a Constitutional Amendment not requiring the vote of Congress. Thus we can change how they do their jobs without involving them in the process. I am not sure if each state would be required to have an election on the proposed Constitutional Amendment. All these legalities are why I suggested the expertise of the ACLU get involved.
Anyway, the process has begun, we now need to get on the bandwagon, refine the document to make it effective and get our states involved.
Simple. Do not do any business with them! Find a local bank or credit union.
Credit unions-individuals have clout. Groups of members can oversee employees,if necessary.
I like the part about moving personal finances to the smaller community banks. If the community banks become the focus of personal savings (which means access to more funds), they can start micro-financing projects to jump start small businesses and even give struggling families low-interest loans to get them back on their feet. But this still doesn't change to the pressing need to reform the big banks so that they won't pose any further danger to the economy at large. Prohibiting high-risk profiteering in the financial industry would be a good start.
Even if we withdraw all our money from the big banks, they still get bailout money, so they will still have money to bribe politicians. It's a revolving door of money. Banks get bailouts, use the money to lobby, and then get more bailouts, they lobby again, and get even more bailouts.
Pushing for campaign finance reform is very important, but it will be very difficult to get it to pass, since our elected officials are too happy receiving bribes, they don't want to change it, we need to force them to do it.
It's passed time to declare DC as morally and fiscally bankrupt.
Only the parts linked to Wallstreet.
Mine's in a credit union.
Kudos!!!!!!!
This piece should be passed around the country.
About campaign finance reform, I think there needs to be a movement by cable consumers and others a like to end political advertisements on network television and only air them between shows on public television for the following reasons:
1. The cost of running elections is becoming outrageous and is part of the reason why there is only two parties.
2. There are other means of advertising and the number of Ads in addition to the robo-calls have gotten beyond the point of being annoying to the point of becoming imposing and in some respects, manipulative
3. There is nothing more aggravating (at least to me) to donate money towards certain candidates only to have to come out of pocket again because they back-peddle on certain promises or water down certain stances.
Furthermore, I find it ironic that even after this election year with the large amounts of money spent towards political advertisement that Television and Newspapers find themselves under water in the same respect as Businesses who "manages" to find money for lobbying. Where did this money go? Through a black hole? A separate Progressive movement is needed indeed. However, I don't think this should be applied to just Wall Street and Larger Banks. I think this should apply to other businesses as well who are not willing to be fiscally responsible in terms of setting salaries for higher positions while violating boundaries between profitability and the public interest.
I don't think most people like giving their money to people who are destroying our economy and democracy.
Right.
But that's not what's going on. Get it straight.
People are paying their taxes because they must by law and the Executive Branch of the Federal Government (Obama) is giving their money to the people wo are destroying our economy and democracy.
Please. Obama and taxpayers are cleaning up the mess created mostly by private financial institutions. Government lobbyists for that industry,too, but hardly all a government invention.
you just can't get it through your thick skull that the TARP was a Bush era plan. Now they are trying to follow through and make it work. I feel it's a mistake, but i'm not an economist either, so I'm waiting to see how it goes after a year.
And if you bank with Citi, BoA, or any of the other biggies, you are giving your money away. Go put it in a credit union. Everyone should.
I agree 100% with this article. The biggest banks and the biggest businesses are what led America to the poorhouse. They are like a prise fighter who is too over weight to move. The faster smaller fighter just eats him up. Just like Asia is eating up American businesses right now. They can inovate and change on the move. What does America get ,more of the same and still advocating that bigger is better.
And the Obama administration is doing all that it can to make sure these big banks survive. It's not about big banks, but it's about risk. If their is not any risk anymore on making investments or business decisions, then banks are going to continue to take them. Let them fail, if they made bad investments, bad business decisions, have bad leadership...etc, let them fail, they deserve to fail. Other banks, those operating smarter and more efficienctly will step in to take over.
Milton Friedman of the "Chicago School" ? Pres. Obama is from Chicago and is following the prescriptions of this political/financial agenda. Look for severe cuts in social security, medical and health care. No one dare call it fascist.
cut in health care? there IS NO HEALTHCARE. that's what Obama is trying to set up for us now, except the repubs are blocking it, because they don't want to help the poor get coverage.
they leech every extra penny out of us through fees for anything we do, then they balk at helping us get medical treatment.
i'm sick of the elitist led enslavement of working class America!
For a real plan, check out www.themoneymasters.com
here, there's a plan by Milton Friedman on complete monetary reform.
It's there, read it!
That's good - Milton Friedman's answers to our financial crises.
Are you the same guy who recommended: "The Cookie Monster's Guide to Avoiding Diabetes"?
Should Obama continue trying to save Capitalism or should we move to Socialism?
How about economic justice?
why don't you define socialism and capitalism first, then i'll answer that for you.
if you go by the standard definitions, i'll take socialism any day. if you go by the distorted meanings that are thrown around by fear mongerers, i'll request you educate yourself.
socialized programs enable services needed by an entire nation be paid for by the nation. you travel by interstate highway? you're a socialist. welcome aboard.
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