Senator Bernie Sanders proposes changes to America’s corrupt banking system

At Huffpo, Senator Bernie Sanders, who remains one of my heroes, points out that the secret bailout by the Federal Reserve makes the better-known bailout look tiny:

More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis. As a result of this audit, the American people have learned that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in low-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, huge foreign banks, multi-national corporations, and some of the wealthiest people in the world. In other words, when Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the federal government acted boldly, aggressively, and with a fierce sense of urgency to save our financial system from collapse with no strings attached.
The huge backdoor bailout is a slap in the face to American taxpayers, especially since the big Wall Street banks are bigger than ever and because they are taking more risks than ever, presumably emboldened by the fact that they are "too big to fail," and that the federal government will come bail them out yet again. Here's what Bernie Sanders proposes to clean up this despicable situation: 1) Break up the big banks. 2) Cap credit card interest rates ("Today, more than a quarter of all credit card holders in this country are paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 59 percent.") 3) Force the Federal Reserve to make low interest loans directly to small businesses. 4) Put an end to speculation that jacks up the price of petroleum products. 5) Demand that Wall Street invest in real businesses instead of "gambling on derivatives." 6) "Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures. Both the economic crisis and the deficit crisis are a direct result of the greed and recklessness on Wall Street." Sanders points out that there was such a fee (.2% tax on all sales and transfers of stock) from 1914 - 1966. Sanders points out that getting these measures passed will be enormously difficult, given that these Wall Street banks spent $5 billion on lobbying over the past decade.  Which leads to another enormous need: to get money out of politics.

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Money talks

During a recent conversation with a friend, I found myself wondering whether I had sufficient evidence for my claim. My claim was that most corporate newspapers and electronic media are reluctant publish stories that make big corporations look bad, the motivation being that big corporations by expensive ads. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. My friend reminded me that her husband works for a newspaper and he's never seen the "smoking gun memo" that substantiates the that corporations are telling the news media what stories to avoid covering. She says that the problem is that the media is understaffed and lazy, not that they are biased. I responded that I don't think that there actually NEEDS to be a memo. As long as the media picks on little targets and celebrity news, there isn't much blow-back. But if they were to take on a big target in a big way, the reporters and editors already KNOW that the switchboard would light up and email will come pouring in from big shots affiliated with corporations, making them wish they they had just stuck with the tried and true (e.g., celebrity news, sports, shootings and accidents). There is a substitute for a smoking gun memo, and it's the overall lack of reporting critical of corporations that is not simply reporting on an ongoing legal dispute or where one corporation criticizes another. Many people think that circumstantial cases are necessarily weak, but this is not true. Criminals are sent to prison based on circumstantial evidence. I'll be on the lookout for a good study that demonstrates the problem, and I'm certainly open to evidence to the contrary. In the meantime, I've just noticed two recent stories that exemplify the political power of money. Example 1: The New Yorker has just published a detailed article explaining how concentrated money is buying elections in North Carolina. Example 2: Contrary to strong studies to the contrary, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization is claiming that the common chemical bisphenol A (BPA) presents no risk of cancer. Here's an excerpt from a recent Mother Jones article, "Is Susan G. Komen Denying the BPA-Breast Cancer Link?":

In April 2010 Komen posted an online statement saying that BPA had been "deemed safe." And a more recent statement on Komen's website about BPA, from February 2011, begins, "Links between plastics and cancer are often reported by the media and in email hoaxes." Komen acknowledges in its older statement that the Food and Drug Administration is doing more studies on BPA, but also says that there is currently "no evidence to suggest a link between BPA and risk of breast cancer."

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Dylan Ratigan offers a coherent message to the Wall Street occupiers

Dylan Ratigan holds that all of our representatives are trapped by the money coursing through the political system and that we need to free them all at once with a Constitutional Amendment. He discusses the Wall Street occupation with Bernie Sanders, who expands the conversation to include more than Wall Street, noting the problems with the military-industrial complex and other well-monied industries. Sanders sums up his aim: To allow "ordinary people to have power to determine what happens."

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Republicans Fiddle and Lie, Obama Shuffles, America Burns

Republicans in the US House and Senate have been complete money grubbers when it comes to getting funds from the Democratic Stimulus Bill but, total lying sacks of dung when reporting about the real results the stimulus bill. Most of those asking for the stimulus funds in the US House have been Republicans. All of the Republicans getting any of such funds have touted their individual successes at bringing home the bacon for their districts or states. [Note: I offering numerous links throughout this post; rather than embed them, I am leaving them as text, which will make it easier to see the topics of the links based on the permalinks]. http://www.iwatchnews.org/2010/10/19/2420/tea-party-founder-texans-among-those-asking-stimulus-funds http://www.democrats.org/news/blog/gop_hypocrisy_on_recovery_act_projects_makes_news_nationwide http://www.wusf.usf.edu/news/2010/10/18/gop_congressmen_criticize_stimulus_ask_for_money [More . . . ]

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Why Barack Obama should not be believed anymore

While Barack Obama gave yet another pretty speech, Matt Taibbi decided to tune out. Here's why:

I remember following Obama on the campaign trail and hearing all sorts of promises before union-heavy crowds. He said he would raise the minimum wage every year; he said he would fight free-trade agreements. He also talked about repealing the Bush tax cuts and ending tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas. It's not just that he hasn't done those things. The more important thing is that the people he's surrounded himself with are not labor people, but stooges from Wall Street. Barack Obama has as his chief of staff a former top-ranking executive from one of the most grossly corrupt mega-companies on earth, JP Morgan Chase. He sees Bill Daley in his own office every day, yet when it comes time to talk abut labor issues, he has to go out and make selected visits twice a year or whatever to the Richard Trumkas of the world. Listening to Obama talk about jobs and shared prosperity yesterday reminded me that we are back in campaign mode and Barack Obama has started doing again what he does best – play the part of a progressive. He's good at it.

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