Jobs Wanted: Ending Rigged Banking = Jobs
August 5, 2011This week we spoke about how fixing trade and the tax code would lead to jobs. Today’s it’s all about banking. The best way I can describe our banking sector right now is it’s like a leaf blower.
Follow me on this one — the system can either inject capital and spread it around through lending, which when done right creates jobs… Or it can suck all the money out.
Right now we’re stuck in that reverse position where banks are taking the money out of play. We gave away the farm and got no changes in the way banks do business.
President Bush did whatever he needed to pass the problem on to Barack Obama…and President Obama doubled down on the Bush plan, leaving banking and Wall Street to go on as if nothing happened. The President, Treasury Secretary Geithner and Fed Reserve Chairman Bernanke threw more of our cash at the big banks to keep them afloat by printing money they didn’t have.
But that’s like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it! Because current banking, and for that matter, trade law, makes it more profitable for banks to engage in financial speculation, loan the money right back to our own government, or take it overseas than it does to focus on domestic lending.
In order to reverse the blower, we need to debate laws that encourage banks to lend, as opposed to speculate and extract…so that money is spread around to job creators who actually produce ideas and hire workers.
Problem is banks need every last dime Treasury and Fed have thrown at them in an effort to mask insolvency whose truth is revealed by a mountain of "assets" marked-to-fantasy" on their books. They can't lend on account of the fact confidence backing these fake assets makes it impossible to lever up their balance sheets any further. There is no hope but to write these fakes off while simultaneously unleashing a modern-day Pecora hearing through the Senate Banking Cmte (because these hopelessly insolvent banking institutions will not take sitting down necessary restructuring, so something is needed to make them heel)…
Dylan,
Talk about trade defecates, rigged political systems and corrupt corporate practices all you want but you will never solve the problems we face until we address the root causes of our problems. The first being our money itself! A fiat currency (backed by nothing) created through the fractional reserve system (creating money out of debt) compounded with interest is at its heart an unsustainable system. How are we to get out of debt if our currency is based on debt? Even if we took all the money (every penny) in circulation today and gave it all back to the banks there would still be outstanding debt due to the system and interest. How is this a good thing? How is this a system that is sustainable? Why are we still using it? Stop talking about the “symptoms” of the problem and start talking about the root problem. Then and only then can we make the necessary changes to move forward.
Systemic monetary reform surely has global solution potential. The "Rethinking Money" theme of FELLOWSHIP magazine, Winter 2011, makes a case for monetary reform as a faith-based issue, calling for activism by those sharing religious experience.
Quotes: "A positive, life-sustaining, civilization-lifting change in the economy is IMPOSSIBLE unless spirituality intervenes. … A paradigm shift transforming attitudes to compassion establishes solidarity of activity institutionalizing cooperation … by practicing purposeful holism: knowing, doing, AND seeing. … [Thus] faith-based [monetary reform] discernment can be grounded in transforming attitudes of [apathy and] indifference into attitudes of compassion. … [whereas] the moral argument based on 'justice-for-the-common-good' can be grounded on inequities."
Although the existing fiat debt-based 'Privatized-Credit-as-if-Money' systems involve various shades of THEFT, nevertheless a secular moral (deontic) classification is discernable: THEFT is not-permissible; THEFT is forbidden; NO-THEFT is obligatory. Modest support exists for the hypothesis that humans possess an innate moral faculty.
Articles on "Rethinking Money" include: "Debt, Disparity, and Discipleship" by Ray V. Foss; "Transformative Religious Experience: The Key to Ending Usury" by Scott C. Mooney; and "Money, Usury, and the Economics of Peace" by Thomas H. Greco. Theme issue is available via forusa.org multimedia.
There can be no solution to the jobs problems without cutting the incentives that corporate America has that allows them to take advantage of cheap overseas labor and importing that labor here to the US. Screaming protectionism is not a valid argument when it comes to self preservation as a Nation. There is a reason why corporate America is flush with cash. The value of cheap overseas labor that was sold to the American public in the guise of plentiful, profitable service jobs in a "service" economy, was intellectually dishonest and those policies should be stopped. Otherwise, when the banks decide to start lending agin it will be invested overseas, and in workers that will work for pennies on the dollar, whether overseas or imported throughout the various visa programs, so that business can show the exorbitant quarterly profit that they have enjoyed all through the recession
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=4956
nafta worked out great did it
So many citizens have so little knowledge of the history of this country, nothing past grade school, that they think the country existed without tax revenue. The fact that it embraced a mercantile system of government, and that trade with other nations has always been a foundation of the economy eludes them. Our Democracy evolved out of a Republican structure first adopted, based on the Democracy of ancient Greeks and the Republic of ancient Romans. I might have a great week, you never know.
the heart of the problem is the FEDERAL RESERVE BANK. their mission is complete. in 100 years they have managed to impoverish us. there used to be inheritances handed down from one generation to the next via housing & savings accounts that earned interest. now, there is nothing to pass from generation to generation except for debt. save your own money in the form of gold & silver, FEERAL RESERVE NOTES are worthless.
DYLAN ,I THINK FROM OUR STATE REPS ALL THE WAY UP TO THE PRESIDENT SHOULD FOR GO THERE BENEFITS AND PAY UNTILL THE CAN GET US OUT OF THIS MESS THAT WE ARE IN .I BET YOU SOMTHING WOULD GET DONE .LIKE MOST REPS SAY WHEN THEY RUN FOR OFFICE,THEY LOVE OUR COUNTRY AND PEOPLE.,THATS GOOD ,THEY CAN DO THE JOB FOR FREE.
your rant is justified…the politicans (except for very few) are bought and the banks,special interests and lobbyists are ruining our financial and socal compact w/ the constitution…Until the president is calling them out there will be NO progress and our country is doomed to furthur failure……..very sad for the US govt and the economy..WE ARE SO ON TO THESE FRUDULANT REPRESENTATIVES !!
Dylan, Great job on your show today!!!! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so fired up. Now if president Obama would get fired up and speak up, and stop going backwards and giving in on every debate. We would be in a better place.
Dylan, I agree with your rant 100%. But truthfully, it gave me such a sense of hopelessness. The whole system is corrupt. There's no way to run for office without becoming beholden to your donors these days,
Dylan, I wish you would interview Dr. Steven Zarlenga of the American Monetary Institute. Dr. Steven Zarlenga has answers that I think would solve America's banking and debt problems. Visit the web site at http://www.monetary.org to read the complete thinking. Also Rep. Dennis Kucinich has introduced H. R. 6550 which incorporates the AMI's monetary act. I would love to see him on your tv show to explain.
Basically it would place the Federal Reserve under the U.S. Treasury Dept., return money creation to the Federal government and end fractional reserve banking. This would end the debt based money creation system and allow the Government to print USA paper money and pay off our debt and spend money into infracture thus creating jobs and modernizing America's infrastructure.
Mona, thank you, so correct. Yes, Dylan, please interview Dennis Kucinich.
There is a Monetary Reform Conference ongoing this weekend in Chicago to broaden the public's understanding and to build the capacity for reforming the money system itself to help everyone.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced the National Emergency Employment Defense Act (“NEED,” HR 6550*) which contains all the monetary reform provisions of The American Monetary Act- see the brochure at http://www.monetary.org. It is much more than regulation; it fundamentally reforms our private CREDIT/DEBT system now wrecking our nation and harming all humanity, and replaces it with a government MONEY system.
http://www.monetary.org/news
How the Economists Facilitated the Crisis and How HR 6550* Solves it
Many economists have falsely concluded that “all money is debt,” and while most money in our particular mis structured system is debt, this attitude ignores the possibility and necessity to define a better system based on government money, not private debt. This failure to understand the concept of government money as opposed to private credit, has had immense and deadly repercussions. The Great Henry Simons summed it up in one magnificent sentence in the 1930s:
“The mistake … lies in fearing money and trusting debt.”
Henry Simons, (Economic Policy for a Free Society, 1930s, P.199)
This fundamental error has allowed the most egregious banking and money system to dominate our society for a century. It has caused immense damage:
For example: The privatization of our monetary system, with control over public policy being in unelected hands, for whoever controls the money system, over time will control the nation.
And look what they have done with that power:
* They’ve given special privilege to create money to some, and disadvantage to others; which has led to an obscene concentration of wealth and a corresponding poverty! This has encouraged lawlessness and corruption among the privileged; pushing them to diseased excess for acquisition, and ignoring those among us in great need.
Rescind the concept of corporate personhood, get the money out of politics, properly regulate the banks and the financial sector, do away with anti-labor laws like the Taft-Hartley Act. And think big! How about proportional representation and a parliamentary system instead of the stodgy two party system we have now?