Penalize Bank Oligarchs to Help Cover the $3 Trillion or More Obama Will Be Spending On His EconWar

1) Yes, I think we are at war. This is a war not unlike we've fought in Iraq, where the enemy is within our country. These agents of the enemy, many of them terrorists, have done massive damage to the US and the world economies. They may not be directly connected to Al Qaeda or Bin Laden, but there is no doubt that their self-interest-driven actions have aided and abetted the goals of Bin Laden.

It is time to define who the enemies in this "war," who the agents of economic terrorism actually are.

2) It is highly likely Obama will spend at least and probably far more than $3 trillion to fight this war-- possibly $10 trillion. Some of it will be congressionally approved, some of it will come from other means. It will probably be necessary to extricate the US and the rest of the world from the World EconWar produced crisis we face.

3) As we fight this Econwar and identify the enemy-- the econterrorists and pirates-- we must retroactively punish them, starting with taking back the plunder they took from companies we are now rescuing.

Call me crazy, or some wild liberal, but I'm not satisfied, watching Henry Paulson enable the rogue corporations that have put our economy into a crisis. Call me crazy if I don't understand why these failed corporate heads are STILL getting tens of millions in pay. Call me crazy if I don't understand why aren't they all being fired and replaced? And call me crazy if I see our financial system as one that allowed the US to be looted-- yes-- when companies are so big they can't be allowed to fail, and when they demand hundreds of billions from we-the-people, then our nation is being looted-- by... what do you call them? Pirates? Financial terrorists who are destroying our economy? Maybe I am crazy. But going along, doing business as Henry Paulson has proposed, first this way, then another totally different way-- to me, THAT is crazy.

The men who ran the US economy into the ground, who failed miserably at responsibly running their companies, have pirated billions. They framed the theft as salary and bonuses. It doesn't matter if the contracts looked legal. It doesn't matter if these thugs didn't break any laws. These pirates declared war on the American people, on the USA's and world's economies. They have done MORE damage than any other terrorist or terrorist organization.

It is time for the congress to pass a law, or for Obama to sign an order that fines these pirates, thieves, hijackers, terrorist corporate leadership failures. The fine should be very big-- something like 90 or 95% of the amount, above, say two million dollars, of all they took in all forms, from the companies they brought down. If they have to sell their mansions and yachts, well, good! If jail terms are thrown in, even better.

Currently, these thugs are living high on the hog, enjoying the power and influence that great wealth brings. They are treated as successes and corporate heroes. They don't deserve it. Instead, they deserve to be identified, villified and brought down as parasites and crooks who not only brought their companies down, but also gutted them. Many of them also contibuted directly and even more, through lobbyists, to get the deregulation and the politicians who engaged in deregulation.

If these economic enemies of America don't go to jail, which seems just and fair to me, they should at least go broke. Let them live on social security or unemployment insurance. Or let them find jobs at new companies stupid enough to hire them. And absolutely forbid any company which hires them to receive bailout funds from the US government or the Federal Reserve. Or, put it this way. Make them pariahs, not allowed to be hired by any company receiving bailout or emergency government or federal reserve help.

And let's make that law which fines these pirates also regulate salaries, so it is no longer possible for ANY corporate executive to make 1000 or 5000 or even 500 times what the lowest paid worker earns. Let's set a limit. And let's make sure that these CEO, CFO, C-Pirate-O's don't get big bucks unless they deliver for the long term-- say seven years. Allow them to get big bonuses if the profits they bring in are still there seven years later, or ten years later. And even then, tax them at the levels President Eisenhower tolerated-- over 90%.

Every day, lately, we're seeing the mainstream media report on Obama's latest appointees-- of "generals" in the War on the financial/economic crisis. It's time they also start reporting on the enemy leaders-- the corporate pirate princes who put the US and the world in the disastrous situation we face-- one which we know will get far worse before it gets better.

I am not anti-business. I AM anti-rapacious, anti-human, anti-social, anti-irresponsible business led by pirates who make decisions that lead to economic conditions which cause the suffering of hundreds of millions. You know how AIG is throwing luxurious parties at exotic places? Fire the people who let them go on. That CITIGROUP sports arena for $400 million- fire the people demanding that be kept. And with all those trillions being spent to bail out banks-- spent a few billion on auditors who have full access to these banks records and plans-- so we can ferret out all the profligate pirates who don't get it that we are at war, that we are in an emergency and the old business of spending all you can get away with is over-- that now, doing that will get you fired, fined and maybe even prosecuted and jailed.

I am not (yet) a business or economy reporter or writer. But it is clear to me that the damage these filthy rich oligarch have done, including Hank Paulson and Larry Summers, with their deregulations that allowed the toxic financial elements, like credit share swaps, derivatives, etc., is huge. These corporate pirates deserve to at the least, have the money and wealth they pried from these failing companies taken back. They deserve to have all their bank accounts attached, their properties sold out from under them.

Let's get something straight. By the time Obama is done, we will not be talking about $500 or $700 billion more in bailout money that our president-elect will have spent. By the time he is done, I guarantee he will, including money spent under his command, through the Federal Reserve (indirectly, but under him, nonetheless) will exceed three trillion dollars and could reach as high as ten trillion. This may seem high. But Bush has lready spent seven trillion and we are still going down further, into a worse, more difficult situation. Weeks before the beginning of the Iraq War, I predicted, feeling brave and visionary, that the war would cost $900 billion. At the time, my estimate was vastly larger than anyone in the media or government was estimating. Of course, now we see nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimating three trillion dollars. So I estimate, today, that Obama will, in his war against the economic collapse, spend at least that amount, and I expect it could be at least triple that. Congress will not authorize all of it. His appointees will.

And while we're penalizing corporate execs who took advantage of the system, let's take a really close look at our military. Bush spent eight years promoting yes-men who would say what he wanted them to say. The congress, was full of elected officials, like Duke Cunningham and Tom Delay, who sold the American people a bill of goods-- one that has hundreds of US bases spread all over the nation. It's time we listen to Ron Paul and pull back. It's time we spend money within the US-- not within Japan or Germany or Korea or Iraq. My state, Pennsylvania, alone, has thousands of bridges that need to be repaired or replaced. Throughout the US there are hundreds of thousands of infrastructure projects that are desperately in need on initiation and completion.

AND... while we're at it, let's end the the right of corporate personhood. This abomination was corruptly appropriated by fraud over 120 years ago, by the big railroad corporations-- the megacorporations of the day. Removing these rights will go a long way towards enabling the real war against financial terrorism and terrorists to proceed.

Originally posted at OpEdNews.com

Follow Rob Kall on Twitter: www.twitter.com/robkall

Comments

[nomadicexpat]

sorry, obviously should read disagree!

[TRYKER]

Thank you for your thoughtful post, Rob.
Everything you said makes good sense. Yes, we should demand, and we can you know, that these crooks get their just desserts, and we get their booty.
I think it is too early to declare disappointment in the Obama admin because of his choices for his cabinet. He has to start somewhere.
If Elliot Spitzer can get "washed" so he can be of service, he would be a helpful hand in rounding up the bad boys.
The Justice Dept will have to have a special RICO unit to unearth and prosecute all the misdeeds of this damned Bush admn...along with the wall streeters.
The War profiteers have untold billions in their coffers too, that we should look too reclaim. Like Obama said, there are a lot of places to look for revenue and a lot of places to cut spending....like on Mercenaries.
He can't really broadcast his plans before he takes office, so give him some time for action before you hang crepe all over his and our hope.
Don't let up on this subject and keep driving it home wherever you can.

[knosiswar]

ROB, can we now admit to the possibility of a conspiracy to establish the one central banking system these people have been planning for. I refer you to the History books on this one. Major General Smedley Butler testified before a Congressional hearing to having been approached by a representative and later a core member of a group seeking to overthow our Democracy and to bring Corporate Fascism to the US. Has all of this really happened by accident. Was it an accident that JP Morgan, an agent for the Rothschilds, created the Bank Panics that brought us the Federal Reserve, and that it was JP Morgan bank that created Credit Default Swaps?

[Dystopic]

Corporate Fascism isn't new, it's a little bit older than the oldest unions.

[Sagantech]

Call you crazy? Huh? Not at all! The opposite in fact. This is what we need to do to restore confidence in our economic system and I hope the people get behind a movement that will recover all of the ill-gotten funds.

[Dystopic]

Clawback is the only way to go, other than prison sentences.

If I worked at a company and embezzled money, I would be going to jail. So, even in board approved embezzlement, the board of directors, the compensation comittees, and the entire management team should be facing jail terms.

If you are busted selling drugs, they seize your assets, citing the idea that these items were purchased with drug money.

Corporate malfeasance should be a crime punishable by manadatory minimum prison terms. The charged should have to make do with a court appointed lawyer, since any money these criminals have cannot be separated out from the crimes they are being charged with.

[Thermodynamics]

The safeguards established in the wake of the '29 crash were systematically dismantled by the new wave of conservatives. They were not fiscal conservatives:

Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 = Enron Loophole
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act = repeal of Glass-Steagal separation of banks from speculative finance
SEC elimination of the uptick rule on July 6, 2007

With cold calculation they exploited the economy just as the architects of the Project for a New American Century exploited the war machine.
It is a little bit philosophical, but the ideas of Leo Strauss illuminate the pea-brained rationalizations that enable deception and plunder, legalized piracy.

"Shadia Drury, professor of political theory at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, argues that the use of deception and manipulation in current US policy flow directly from the doctrines of the political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973). His disciples include Paul Wolfowitz......"

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-iraqwarphiloshophy/article_1542.jsp

http://www.uregina.ca/arts/CRC/

[Rob Kall - Huffpost Blogger]

I can't express how much I hope Obama will become a great president. But so far, his picks are disappointing-- not surprising-- but disappointing. Some of them look to have been a big part of the problem. We need new ways to see things and even more, new ways to address our problems-- from a big picture, bottom up perspective. Obama talks a lot about bottom up solutions for mainstreet. But he's hired top down wall street wonks. Go figure. Or... do the numbers and it doesn't add up to the change he promised... so far. I still have some hope, but I don't know how long it will last-- certainly through January and probably until June. After that, who knows.

[JBS]

You shouldn't be disappointed, because you shouldn't have expected anything else. If you look at Obama's record in the senate, there's nothing there to support the notion of "change".

He voted FOR the Paulson bank bailout.
He voted FOR the telecom immunity amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
He voted FOR "DRILL, BABY DRILL!"

But if you look closely at his positions in the Senate, his most frequently chosen position on any subject has been "NOT VOTING".

So that leaves you looking at his campaign advisers, who turn out to be the former administration insiders who pushed through the massive wave of financial sector de-regulation during Clinton's first term that has brought our economy to it's present sorry state.

I commented many times during the primary season that of all former Presidents and candidates for President, that when you looked at the numbers behind Obama's rhetoric, his seemed to have the most in common with GW Bush's 2000 campaign.

I ended up voting for Obama because I thought he'd do less harm to the working class than McCain/Palin, not because I expect him to actually deliver the "change" he promised.

None of my expectations for what an Obama administration might turn out to be have been "disappointed".