The Banking Miracle

The mainstream press is starting to get a handle on what is going on in our massively corrupt banking system.  After thirty years of Reaganesque banking deregulation of  this monster, it’s about time.

Countless self-interested commenteurs and useful idiots tell us that it is impossible to return to Glass-Steagall or that it would not have stopped this crisis.  Ridiculous lies and ignorance.  Joe Nocera provides a fresh look at Glass-Steagall and calls it a banking miracle.  I applaud Nocera for having the moxy to write this article in the belly of the beast, New York City, but let’s get real.   We don’t need a miracle to enforce the constitution, the rule of law, sound economics and democracy.  We need leaders who are willing to stand alone against the mass of fraud and corruption in our politics.   Seldom do the convergence of politicians and leadership cross paths and surely it hasn’t with Obama, Bush, or Clinton.  Or Pelosi, Boehner, McConnell, Reid, Gingrich or Ryan.   Let’s get real.  We won’t see anything accomplished until we clean up the corruption in government.   And that won’t happen until we ditch the two party system or see a complete economic catastrophe.

We posted the original Glass-Steagall Act that was a few dozen pages comparative to the massively corrupt 2,000 page and growing 2010 financial reform bill.   The 2010 bill protects Wall Street’s franchise on corruption through loop holes, legalese complexity and fuzzy red tape.   The 1932 bill simply eradicated corruption.    Period.  And as Nocera points out, banks kept their mouths shut because their CEOs were damn lucky they didn’t end up in prison. 

Nocera is the first mainstream journalist I have seen who has both the understanding and the guts to effectively intimate that investment banking should once again be eradicated, a position we have espoused for years.  As we have noted before, investment banking is an evil and destructive force on our economy.   But it is one glorified by politicians, Wall Street and Ivy League business schools; all of whom are complicit in this great fraud.  

Society’s capital should be held in democratic institutions owned equally by all Americans.  We should have a public banking system that serves human development and democracy.  Not a private cabal of crooks who are constantly attempting to subvert our democracy and our freedoms by using our own capital against our democracy to bribe our government.   If nothing else, we should return to banking as it existed fifty years ago.  That is, community banking with no banking beyond state borders.   

Vote for leaders in Washington who eschew the corrupt two party system.  Bust up the banks.