How to Solve the US Housing Problem and Avoid a Recession: A Revived HOLC and RTC (tags)
In 1933, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act, which banned banks from underwriting securities. Financial institutions had to choose either to be a simple bank lender or an underwriter (investment banker or brokerage firm).
Blow up the banking system: A free account for all is possible (tags)
Harsh austerity policies for the vast majority of people and state socialism for bankers, both practiced at the same time in Europe and the U.S. after 2008 - this had two consequences for financialized capitalism of the past 14 years. First, this course poisoned the West's money.
The Curse of Financial Entrepreneurship (tags)
We are not prisoners of bad decisions made in the past. We can and should rein in Wall Street, break up its five giant “too-big-to-fail” banks, support local and state banks, resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act’s divide between investment & commercial banking, tax all financial transactions
Ten Years After the Financial Crash (tags)
US economic statistics are dubious since financial markets are based on financial products and money out of nothing. Tax havens, micro-second betting, stock buybacks and corruption through lobbying are market-distorting and cause revenue shortfalls.
Bernie Sanders' Socialist America (tags)
Bernie believes there has been a corporate takeover of American democracy, and this is where he returns to the idea of political revolution. In nearly every speech he makes this clarion call, ...neither he nor any other politician can make the necessary changes alone.
"Who is saving Whom?" shows what remains hidden. A tremendous redistribution from the bottom to the top.. Rescuing is taking place, for the 99% however there is no sign of a rescue.
Nuclear Bomb Witness, Mobile Audit Club Daily Forewords, ISIS good Sissies like Reid Fag, (tags)
Robin Williams was led and coaxed helped to his death by those who did not care for him. Our leaders, some of them have tried to do the same to many of us. It is time to awaken to the facts revealed by Mobile Audit Club's Saintrambone
As Quartermaster Memory Returns, Nuclear Disaster Directly off So Cal Coast 1983 (tags)
Radio active carrion or fresh seafood from the California coast? I was witness to the flash and later I was witness to the radiation and to this day show the scars. Here is the latest from Mobile Audit Club, as my memory returns.
Nuclear Bomb LA 1983, Revelations tortured Witness Recovers from 14 year coma (tags)
A nuclear bomb was viewable from San Pedro in Los Angeles in 1983. I saw the edge of it and my girlfriend saw it directly from our apartment. I am Kurt Brown alias Saint Ram Bone, former USN Quartermaster on the USS Reid FFG 30 and I was a FDIC bank examiner and journalist
Learning from Roosevelt: HIs "New Deal" (tags)
The Civilian Conservation Corps helped overcome the basic pessimistic mood in society. Within a few months, 500,000 young persons had hope again. The government should intervene in case of an economic emergency.
Ten threats to Americans: Lori Wallach (tags)
Lori Wallach is director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.
The Fiscal Cliff Is A Diversion: The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble (tags)
The fiscal cliff is a bipartisan excuse to introduce austerity measures in the form of "needed" cuts to social safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The stage is set for "Jason vs. Freddy" or Obama vs. Boehner as we the people wait to see which politician serial killer will be cutting the U.S. people with their sharp knives of austerity.
Barack Obama must stimulate the economy with state spending. The astonishing example of Europe could convince republicans who in the past blocked everything... The monetary policy of a central bank cannot replace fiscal policy,
The Left, Labor and Occupy (tags)
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel "black bloc" anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against "ultraleftists" in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle.
USA Laws Butchering Banks and Causing Murder, See San Bruno, See FDIC Act of 1991 (tags)
The USA government has gone into full butcher mode with murders galore in the San Francisco Bay area to vouch for mayhem caused by change in banking laws. A sort of Wal-Mart of Banking Laws in 1999 and 1991 allowing banks such as Wachovia to Be Buthchered.
[The Occupy movement] Demands and Grievances: Limit Corporate Power, Equal Rights for All (tags)
Different statements have been released by the more than 1,500 solidarity groups and occupations throughout the world..... the Move Your Money Project and Bank Transfer Day, both in solidarity with the Occupy movement, have called for people to remove their money from large corporate banks by Nov. 5, moving their money to local banks and credit unions. Excerpts from two occupations' statements of grievances and demands follow.
Occupy Wall Street and its sister movements, including Occupy San Diego, have dramatically changed the terms of political and economic debate in the U.S. Before they arose, it looked like the only choices the American people would be given to understand the disaster that has befallen them in this nation's economic collapse was the mild pro-corporatism of the Democratic Party and the ardent, Ayn Randian pro-corporatism of the Republicans and the Tea Party. What's more, so far the Occupy protesters have shown an ability to learn from the Left's past mistakes, pattern their movement after the American Revolution (as the Tea Party did) and junk the hideously unworkable process of consensus decision-making.
An Expansion of Terms Used in the Coffee Party Article by RP (tags)
I apologize for the weak structure in this article. I was hoping to write something that explained some of the material in the story, but ended up going a bit afield with the information. This article attempts to be neutral and nonpartisan, or at least not shrill, and avoids too much analysis. The nature of the Great Recession is difficult to sum up in a few pages, because it's a failure of a complex system with many parts, and many related behaviors, that led to the near-collapse of capitalism.
The Financial Crisis and the Failure of the Modern Economy (tags)
The US government debt shot up from 2.9% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2008 and 11.9% in 2009. At the summits of Washington, London and Pittsburg, the goat was made the gardener. Ineffective rules were resolved that hardly helped regulate the financial markets.
The Return of the State (tags)
The state is welcome again in this plight. The brazenness with which those who caused the crisis now demand state subsidies to bailout the financial system is just as breathtaking as the state readiness to fulfill this demand.
FDR's New Deal v. Obamanomics in Their First 100 Days (tags)
stark mirror opposites
The New World Order's ObamaNation (tags)
Matt Taibbi has written an important article in this month's Rolling Stone magazine. In it he explains to the reader, in layman's terms, just what happened, how it happened, and who benefited from the massive taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street's biggest firms. But, most importantly, he hits the nail on the head by saying that the Republic is officially dead (and we do hear the dirge) -- there is no more pretense that we live in a democracy under the rule of law, because now the lawless ones have "officially" taken over the apparatus of the state and given us the finger in the process. Yes, as Taibbi's says: "We are royally fucked." Congress is now a collection of rubber stampers, and the people -- Wall Street slaves.
Obama's Mistake in Reasoning (tags)
The accumulation of capital in fewer and fewer hands first made possible the worldwide economic crisis. For Obama's economic policy to be successful, he must reverse the assets disparity and force the 10% with two-thirds of the assets to solidarity through higher taxes.
Financial Markets: Is No One Responsible? (tags)
Enlightenment is part of overcoming crisis, not only money packages. Ten officials in every boardroom is not the solution. Rather the problem is the incredible transformation of the modern bank into a service enterprise with an adjacent casino.
The U.S. Economy on FIRE (tags)
The current U.S. economic crisis didn't start a few years ago when banks and financial institutions started selling "subprime" real estate loans to high-risk borrowers and then repackaging them as "mortgage-backed securities." It began in the early 1970's as a result of a long-term plan by America's major corporations and business leaders to drive down workers' wages and extract more surplus value — and the workers' response, which was to take on more debt. Any real solution that benefits working people cannot be instituted until the power of the corporate rich over the political system is broken.
Citigroup Protests: Philly 8/2; LA 8/17/00 (tags)
Citigroup, the largest U.S. bank, is being called to account by an emerging coalition of community, environmental, and human rights groups. Round One was in Philadelphia on August 2; Round Two is in Los Angeles, August 17, 9 a.m., Pershing Square. After that, for more information, visit, , or . As Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney says (on PBS), "See How We Earn It." How? From redlining to redwoods, prisons to predatory lending...