I just read Danny Schechter's latest, "The Crime of Our Time," which ads to his latest film, "Plunder," and a series of related books.
It's useful to remember that Congress and the presidents bailed out with our money people who appear guilty of serious crimes, and is now debating whether to slightly regulate their ongoing crimes, but criminal prosecutions are still not flowing down like waters into Wall Street.
Schechter's book reads like a long blog entry blockquoting numerous other blogs. It's not an indictment, but a wakeup call to prosecutors and to the rest of us.
SENS. BROWN, KAUFMAN TO HOLD NEWS CONFERENCE CALL ON WALL STREET REFORM Senators to Announce Introduction of Bill Ensuring Banks Don’t Become ‘Too Big to Fail;” Have Resources to Cover their Losses Main Street Alliance to Release Letter Signed by 100+ Small Businesses on Need for Wall Street Reform WASHINGTON D.C. – U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Ted Kaufman (D-DE) will hold a news conference call tomorrow [WEDNESDAY] to discuss Wall Street reform. They will be joined by the Main Street Alliance, which will be releasing a letter signed by more than 100 small businesses urging tough Wall Street reform. The senators will explain why reform is need to hold Wall Street accountable, prevent future bailouts, and protect American homes, jobs, pensions, and businesses. Brown and Kaufmann will announce the introduction of new legislation that would place reasonable caps on the size of our nation’s behemoth financial institutions. Their bill, The SAFE Banking Act of 2010, would also ensure that banks have the resources to cover their losses.
Tomorrow, Senators Kaufman and Brown will be introducing a Break Up The Banks bill. No one can beat our excitement over this -- we stood up for structural reform for over a year and we've been heard! This bill can mean the largest reform to the power of large corporations in 80 years.
We have maybe a month to two months on financial reform in Congress. This is an important moment for slaying a huge part of political corruption.
Please stay tuned and share your ideas for reform.
You can join the rest of the country on Valentine's Day in breaking up with the big banks and making these too big to fail monstrosities too failing to be big: http://www.bankbreakup.org
Come on. A little less talk and a lot more action.
You know, the year 2009 started out kind of nicely. We watched Barack Obama take the oath of office, serenaded by the awesome Aretha Franklin (wearing her awesome hat), after first hearing Pete Seeger sing the real Woody Guthrie verses to "This Land Is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Monument.
If you google “recession easing,” you will find articles all the way back to April quoting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as saying that the recession is easing, and that the economy is “improving modestly.” Newspapers too, on their own, have written rosy-tinged stories about how things are bad but getting better.
Spins get put on every hint of good news, as when last month “only” 11,000 jobs were lost (a story that was quickly followed by an “unexpected” jump in new unemployment claims by 474,000 in early December.
A few months ago, like many struggling Americans, I had my credit
line frozen at my local bank. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and have
always paid my monthly installment payment on time, but I learned from
a bank employee at the institution, which had once been a small
family-owned operation but had earlier this year been acquired by a
regional bank, that most of the bank’s home-equity lines of credit were
being similarly frozen and “reviewed” because the bank had lent a lot
of money to a housing development that was underwater and facing
bankruptcy. I was told I could simply apply for a new credit line, and
pay off the old one, but there was a hitch: I’d be paying almost 3%
more per month in interest than with the old loan.
Michael Moore's movie motivated me to bring this out. Here's a theme song for Capitalism that I wrote at the time of Paulson's Plunder. Here it is sung by Timbrewolf:
OMG! Those protesters showing up at Democratic “town meetings” to
promote the president’s health care “reform” program are being bused in
from out of town?
Scandal! Que horrible! (Gasp)
But wait! That’s exactly what we on the left always did when we
held demonstrations—at least if we could. Who in the trade union
movement hasn’t called on fellow workers in other unions to join them
in rallies during struggles with an employer, or asked them to join
sparse picket-lines? Who hasn’t pulled out the stops trying to get
people from other cities to attend a local protest?
