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Banks: Like fragile little girls
To buttress the point in my last post about the inability of Congress to accomplish anything, let's hear from Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. Six months ago, she appeared on "Real Time with Bill Maher", where she said Congress was on the "brink of financial reform." Well, she's back in the most recent episode of the show, and guess what she's saying now?
WARREN: I really thought when I was hear the last time you and I talked, that we were on the brink of real financial reform. That we were going to change the system, we were going to have a consumer agency to make sure that we kind of rolled back the crazy abuses and the tricks and the traps...
MAHER: You thought that? What do you smoke before the show?
WARREN: The reason that we aren't changing things right now is that the banks have lobbyists in Washington in numbers I've never seen. (Applause) They're coming not just once a month, once a week or even once a day. These guys are coming in two and three and four times a day. They're making phone calls. They've got their position papers. And they just keep slamming in the same direction over and over. And people who just want to advocate for American families, people who want some changes, who want to level the playing field, they don't have that kind of lobbying power.
Another funny from Maher:
MAHER: It always seems that we need the banks' permission to reform. We just can't do something because they're so fragile. Isn't that the way it strikes you? They're very emotional. They're like a girl with low self-esteem. That's what this economy reminds me of. It's okay now, but if we say you're ugly, she's just gonna...
Later on, Warren talks about the credit card reform measures that take effect today. She says of the 10 major practices that were banned, the credit card companies have already figured 8 new devices for getting around the laws.
To which Maher replies: "It just sucks. The whole country just sucks."
Enjoy:
The economy is broken. Debtors, in general, cannot pay their debts, begining with the public debt: it is unpayable.
Banks (and the "Wall Street" investors) are the "storage" of those papers (bonds, promissory notes, mortgages, etc).
So if debt is unpayable, banks (and the like) are broken.
In economies like ours (and everywhere, but the other ones hide it better) when banks are broken, the entire economy goes broken.
So, in America, authorities let banks hide the real situation, and promote them to do so. The same the Goverment do for itself: never say anyody that US is unable to pay the mounstrous debt we have.
Two choices: live with that; or tell publicly the true (which should be made) and let this become a "circus". Personally, I think the "circus" solution would work.
The whole problem with the big banks and lots of big business is the people at the top layers. The vast majority of these people probably have multiple? degrees from Extremly BRAND name educational insitutions. They are also no doubt very competetive and coniving people which is how they get tothetop. Few if any of these people have ever had to work in a real job. They live in their ownlittle worlds and have no clue what goes on outside. They might watch the various TV news but that is not the same as being out and about being with real people!
Ms. Warren is a real treasure!
She foresaw (and spoke about on PBS's Bill Moyer's Journal) the financial trainwreck we have experienced over the last 2 years, and she was warning about it over 4 years ago.
The message is clear: if we don't get a handle on monied interests directing public policy, we are doomed as a nation.
Kiss your job, your Social Security benefits (sorry, we used that SS Fund to pay for wars, so we wouldn't have to rollback the "temporary" tax cuts for the super-rich), and your middle-class lifestyle goodbye.
Elizabeth Warren is a real hero. It's too bad President Obama won't give her any power to pursue real reform.
The Congress has been the broken branch of our government for some time. But President Obama has the capability to persuade and pressure our representatives and senators; he has not because he's too beholden to the same interests as they are.
So long as money is considered consitutionally-protected speech under the law, we can only expect more of the same. The voices of those interested in the common good of the American people will continue to be drown out by the roar of monied interests.
On the lighter side, here's a heartwarming little <a href="http://www.publicradio.org/tools/media_player/popup.php?name=phc/2010/02... about Powdermilk Biscuits and Goldman Sachs that I heard this weekend on <i>Prairie Home Companion</i>. It's a good tonic, if only temporary.
