The American people have ponied up an ocean of cash to bail out some of biggest corporations and financial institutions that exist in our country. And what have they done with it? Exactly what you’d expect a heroin addict to do if you gave them a bag of heroin. It’s been business as usual. Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC says the movers and shakers on Wall Street have turned financial markets into a giant casino. A casino where corporations like Bank of America, Citigroup, and AIG lost hundreds of billions of dollars that belonged to their customers (the American people.) The high risk unscrupulous schemes they participated in being the result of a Republican majority obsessed with removing any government oversight that would present an obstacle to that end.
Ever since deregulation and tax cut fever took over the Right under Reagan we’ve seen a steady decline in the integrity of the people controlling our financial markets. Playing “whose the richest SOB” has taken the place of reasoned behavior concerned with the overall economic health of our nation. Today the only thing that counts is the bottom line. And the only measure of a company is what it’s profit margin is at the end of the day.
Companies that demonstrate a true concern for the community they depend on are seen as weak. Companies that place their workers welfare above profit are called inefficient or foolish. I was listening to a radio talk show just after Reagan left the presidency. I don’t remember the guests name, but when the host asked him what Reagan’s most important legacy would be, the man answered, “Reagan will be remembered as the president who made greed a legitimate motive for success.” In other words. It’s not important to develop a sense of obligation to the society to which one is born when seeking success. One only need to concentrate on them self and the material things they desire to be successful. It was like telling a bunch of juvenile delinquents that all the rules had been suspended and they were free to do what ever they wanted.
And do what ever they wanted they did. The Reagan era ushered in a wave of mergers, buy outs, and hostile takeovers the likes of which had never before been seen. It was like a scene from the movie “The Blob.” With every merger, buy out, or hostile takeover the beasts grew bigger and more powerful. Today we are told that these corporations are too big to fail. Now if that’s not a monster I don’t know what one is. Too big to fail? That’s scarier than any horror movie I can remember. It sounds sickingly familiar to the kinds of excuses you hear heroin junkies use when they’re trying to justify why quitting would be pointless. “It’s too late, I’m too far gone man.” But as it is with heroin addicts, it’s never too late to get a junkie off the dope. And if we ever hope to fix the problems on Wall Street the last thing we need to do is give them more dope i.e., money.
To these corporations and financial institutions money has become their crack. And if we want to stop the madness giving them more crack is not the answer, We have to cut off their supply of dope. Therefore I want to advocate an idea Dylan Ratigan had. We must starve the beast. So, if you have money in any of the big national banks or are invested in any of the big national investment firms, take it out and place it with a small regional bank or credit union. Because as long as the money keeps flowing these miscreants will just keep gambling with OUR money and losing it. Especially if they know “we the people” will just bail them out.
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You can listen to Devin talk politics at earlymorningpundits.com with Dr. Candace House and Devin Barber every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8:00 AM Eastern and 5:00 AM Pacific. You can also listen to recorded shows anytime.
Devin Barber, Politics Correspondent
Devin’s column, “Left Of The Right” published weekly or more to Gather Essentials: Politics is a Blue Collar Democrats take on current political news.
Devin was raised by proud Roosevelt Democrats. Being the son of parents counted among the throng of Americans displaced by the Great Depression has given Devin a deep rooted passion for causes dealing with the poor and the working class.
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Comments: 22
Be back later must finish something elsewhere!
I'm skeptical that the paradigm ever will change much, if at all. "It's bad for business" is seen as a legitimate reason to delay, diminish, or disallow reforms that would harm the bottom line, even if the reforms would benefit the populace as a whole. And as long as corporations can lavish money on candidates and lawmakers, they will have the upper hand over us all.
The rest is history. I hope all those former day traders take notice of where their money is actually going. The pension holder, the retired that refinanced and those who took a mortgage in recent years can't be blamed for trusting in trends. For those foreclosed mortgage families and those out of work my words are poor consolation.
Yesterday I stood in the middle of a 184 acre solar power plant made possible by stimulus money.
I wonder, would you have objected to the construction of the Interstate Highway System.
Probably not, because Eisenhower was a Republican and he sold it to the American people not as an economic engine of growth, which it was, but rather funded it through the Defense Department as military expenditures. Its express purpose was to facilitate the movement of troops and material in the event that anyone was stupid enough to attack the American Homeland. In the era of Joe McCarthy, I guess that made sense.
Would you object to the upgrading of the electric power grid if it was funded through the defense department?
The Party of NO! rides on.
You got me all wrong. I'm a liberal Democrat. And I'm absolutely NOT talking about things like building solar power plants or infrastructure or modernizing our electrical grid. I;m talking about the money we gave to entities like Bank of America, AIG, and the others. They took billions form the government and proceeded to go on as if nothing had changed. And now General Motors has asked for more. I say no more dope for the addicts.
I absolutely agree with your feelings about GM. This is the company that in the 1920's purchased all the privately owned trolley companies and shut them down because they were a threat to the automobile and thus contributing to the current horrific traffic problems in many of our cities.
There is a pattern here though that people miss. Ronald Reagan deregulated the savings and loans. The thieves moved in and pretty soon we had a crisis. George Bush sought to finance a war without raising taxes by generating revenue from the economy's "churn" and overvaluation of assets and to make that work hamstrung the regulators who could have prevented the current melt down so badly that the thieves moved in and Surprise! we have another crisis.
There are two pieces to this I do not understand. The party of NO still is pushing for reduced regulation and why were we surprised that this happened in the first place?
Florida Power and Light is a large corporation. My concern is that when we blast "big business" we blast people who may not have it coming along with those who clearly do.
Bob
Repeating the same actions while expecting different results -- isn't that the definition of insanity?
If you want to see some real, honest to gosh deregulating fools, one need look no further than Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, and Alan Greenspan. The Clinton years marked a period of deregulation unmatched, even by Ronald Reagan.
Brooksley Born warned us all about the derivatives problem, but she was shut down and silenced by the gang of three mentioned above. As head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, she literally discovered the practice of bundling and selling derivatives, as an official agent of the federal government, which was unaware of the practice until Born became the head of the CFTC.
Her immediate impulse was to regulate because it was obvious the house of cards would fall sooner or later. So sure, blame Ronald Regan to your heart's content. But please, tell the rest of the story as well.