Making banks pay for their secret $7 trillion free ride

Eliot Spitzer offers "5 Ways to Make Banks Pay for Their Secret $7 Trillion Free Ride." Here's the problem:

During the deepest, darkest period of the financial cataclysm, the CEOs of major banks maintained in statements to the public, to the market at large, and to their own shareholders that the banks were in good financial shape, didn’t want to take TARP funds, and that the regulatory framework governing our banking system should not be altered. Trust us, they said. Yet, unknown to the public and the Congress, these same banks had been borrowing massive amounts from the government to remain afloat. The total numbers are staggering: $7.7 trillion of credit—one-half of the GDP of the entire nation. $460 billion was lent to J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley alone—without anybody other than a few select officials at the Fed and the Treasury knowing. This was perhaps the single most massive allocation of capital from public to private hands in our history, and nobody was told. This was not TARP: This was secret Fed lending.

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Mark your calendars for the Anti-Fourth-of-July

Mark your calendars for The Fourth-of-January, the antipode of The Fourth-of-July. The Fourth-of-January will be a new national date of remembrance.  This new occasion will be about the United States of America, but there won't be any fireworks and it's not going to be a happy occasion. In fact, as happy as the Fourth-of-July is, the Fourth-of-January will be the diametric opposite. Citizens will somberly recognize the Fourth-of-January by gathering together to watch mock funerals wind through their city centers, where they will mourn the death of democracy. An American flag will be placed prominently on the hearse, serving as a symbol of the deceased. On the Fourth-of-January, American citizens will actually bury these American Flags to recognize the fact that ordinary citizens of the United States have no  meaningful input in how their federal government is run. At the destination of the funeral procession, citizens will carve these words onto the tombs:

Here lies Old Glory, destroyed by Citizens United and by the unwillingness politicians to pass a Constitutional Amendment and enabling laws to remove private money from the American political system.

The Fourth-of-January will be a day when people consciously refrain from reading The United States Constitution, lest they become deluded that federal politicians are public servants of ordinary citizens.  It will be a day when, instead, mourners read proclamations that the existence of vast amounts of money in the political system has made it impossible to meaningfully debate even the simplest of political issues. It will be a day when Americans recognize that big corporate money has turned America's politicians into  psychopaths.  It will be a day when Americans remind themselves that their every year their politicians spend more tax dollars to air-condition soldiers' tents in the Middle East than they allocate for the total budget of NASA, to explore the mysteries of outer space. The Fourth-of-January will be a date when Americans consider  renaming of all of their major holidays based on fact that quest for corporate profits now dominate all celebrations, and that America's news media celebrates this fact. On the Fourth-of-January, Americans will recognize that, contrary to the will of the People, America has become unstoppably addicted to warmongering, and that it has become a nation that doesn't treasure safe food, medicine, chemicals, air and water.  It has become a nation that allows big banks, fossil fuel companies, telecoms and insurance companies to write national laws that cause massive financial damages to the People. On this new Day of Remembrance, Americans will pause for a moment of silence to recognize the brutalizing and almost unstoppable financial and political power of America's corporate-military-prison-industrial-Complex. The Fourth-of-January will recognize that laws passed contrary to the wishes of the majority of citizens have resulted in sub-standard schools, catastrophic national debt, state sponsored torture, spying on citizens, governmental secrecy and abuses inflicted on citizens and journalists who are attempting to exercise their Constitutional rights.  On the Fourth-of-January Americans will recognize that their highest court has become deaf to the needs of the People, and that the "rule of law" is rapidly becoming available only to those of significant financial means. The Fourth-of-January is a day when we warn our grade school children that much of what they are reading in their American civics textbooks is stunningly false. The Fourth-of-January will be celebrated every year unless and until the corrupting force of private money is removed from the American political system. -- [Photo credits:  Derivative work funeral photo by Erich Vieth, incorporating flag photo by Tarajane at Dreamstime.com (with permission) and Original funeral photo, which is a public domain work.  Corporate flags photo by Erich Vieth, photo taken at the 2011 downtown St. Louis Fourth of July celebration].

Continue ReadingMark your calendars for the Anti-Fourth-of-July

A new Declaration for America: to wake up from its delusions

With the help of a DI reader who wishes to remain anonymous, I have created the following Declaration for modern Americans to wake up from their delusions. I'd recommend that all adults and school children put their hands over their hearts in the morning and say the following instead of pledging allegiance to the powers-that-be (but see here for an alternate form of the Pledge).

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Payday Lenders rule in Texas

Here's one way that deregulation has worked in Texas:

Large corporations that operate payday lenders, many of them based in Texas, have been steady contributors to Perry's political campaigns over the last decade, donating upwards of $200,000, according to Texas campaign finance disclosure statements. In 2004, Perry appointed William J. White, a senior executive of one of the nation's largest payday lending corporations, Cash America International, to a seat on the Texas Finance Commission, which is tasked in part with protecting the state's consumers. Two years ago, the governor elevated White to the chairmanship of that body.

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Terrorist = a Muslim who commits violence

Glenn Greenwald points out that Americans are commonly persuaded and controlled through the use of vague terms. One example is the word "terrorism," which tends to be applied only where the person committing violence is a Muslim and not when non-Muslims commit comparable acts. A "militant" has come to mean any person who dies when an American weapon explodes. "Class warfare" and "Civil liberties" are other commonly used vague terms that are actually used as "tools for misleading political arguments." Another such vague term is "rule of law," which originally referred to the idea that "we are all equally bound to a common set of rules, regardless of power position, or prestige." It originally meant that "nobody is above the law or below the law." Citing the work of Thomas Carruthers, Greenwald noted that the biggest challenge is to prevent elites from living above the rule of law. The founding fathers, who personally "loved inequality," agreed that a central requirement for the new country is that everyone would comport with the law; without this requirement, they agreed that the country would not be "legitimate and just." Greenwald explained that with regard to "rule of law," things aren't working out so well in modern day America. The biggest problem is that "we no longer believe in the principle itself." With regard to journalists (see below), they now tend to be situated as insiders rather than outsider watchdogs who, in less dysfunctional times, embraced the motto: "Afflict the powerful, comfort the powerless." Greenwald has been out and about, promoting his new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some. For many additional videos of his talks, see here.

Continue ReadingTerrorist = a Muslim who commits violence