Which Bank Is the Worst for America? 5 Behemoths That Hold Our Political System Hostage

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/story/152686/which_bank_is_the_worst_for_america_5_behemoths_that_hold_our_political_system_hostage_/

October 19, 2011 |



The economic crash led to the loss of 9 million jobs and the biggest drop in American home-ownership since the Great Depression. Long-term unemployment, poverty and hunger have increased dramatically. People are angry. The Occupy Wall Street movement, a stand against Wall Street's greed, excess and criminality, has captured the imagination and participation of millions across the nation and the globe.

The giant mortgage bubble and the irresponsible and corrupt practices that caused the catastrophic economic crash didn't emerge out of thin air. They were a consequence of decades of pay-to-play politics rife with conflicts of interest; a political system awash in cash and legal pay-offs, designed to undermine the checks and balances that could have prevented the meltdown.

Many of these checks and balances were implemented during the Great Depression. How they were eroded and eventually abandoned is the story of a small group of banks, financial companies and elites involved in major conflicts of interest, revolving-door politics and backroom deal-making -- all to protect the interests of the global elite at the expense of the American public.

Big Finance has a long history of working hard to deregulate the American economic system on behalf of global capitalism run amok. One of its biggest coups was the overturning of the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that created a firewall between investment banking and the commercial banks that hold deposits and make loans.

[dkf]

1. The number of jobs and home owners overshot on the way up too.

If the banks hadn't done what they did there wouldn't have been as many jobs or homeowners to lose. But staying at the peak is completely unrealistic as it was artificially reached.

[Syrinx]

2. turn the 5 into 500!

[xchrom]

4. +1

[The2ndWheel]

11. E pluribus unum

[sakabatou]

3. It seems that each time something is deregulated

It gets fucked up big time.

[stockholmer]

6. that is because it really is not 'deregulation', it is corporate fascism disguised as either

deregulation by the so-called right-wing, OR 'government oversight' by the so-called left-wing. The last thing the systemic controllers want is a 'level playing field'.

The problem with the US experiment is not big government per se, it is big government that has morphed in all areas over the last 100 years into nothing more than an enforcement mechanism for the systemic controllers. Agencies that should be for the public good are simple the tools of the elite designed to to crush all competition from small and mid-size firms.


This started in the USA during the so-called Progressive Era under Theodore Roosevelt, wherein huge monopolies like Standard Oil, etc, utilized a 'don't throw me in the briar patch' argument to get the force of government into regulating business practices (regulations that many times in the 100 years since they have written, then had a bought and paid for Congress pass). Far from creating a free market, this quashed their rivals in so many cases, and made it exceedingly hard for small entrepreneurs to compete.

The US Animal ID act is a perfect example, wherein a small sized chicken farmer has to pay exorbitant licensing fees per chicken, thus forcing them out of business, whilst monstrously huge consortiums like Tyson, etc, simply are allowed to buy one large bulk license that covers millions of birds.

Check out New Left historian Gabriel Kolko, who in his book "The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916."
In it, he lays out a case for the rise of modern corporatist system during the Progressive Era.
This in turn, allows for the violation of a anti-fascistic principle – No socialization of losses and privatization of gains
(ie the confluence of big business and big government in mutual reinforcement)

http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500

http://www.4shared.com/document/Psy6aMNF/Gabriel_Kolko_-_The_Triumph_Of.html pdf


Kolko was soon joined by other New Left historians such as William Appleman Williams in challenging the reigning "corporate liberal" orthodoxy. Rather than "the people" being behind these "progressive reforms," it was the very elite business interests themselves responsible, in an attempt to cartelize, centralize and control what was impossible due to the dynamics of a competitive and decentralized economy.

.............in advancing the corporate liberalism idea whereby the old Progressive historiography of the "interests" versus the "people" was reinterpreted as a collaboration of interests aiming towards stabilizing competition . According to Grob and Billias, "Kolko believed that large-scale units turned to government regulation precisely because of their inefficiency" and that the "Progressive movement - far from being antibusiness - was actually a movement that defined the general welfare in terms of the well-being of business" . Kolko, in particular, broke new ground with his critical history of the Progressive Era. He discovered that free enterprise and competition were vibrant and expanding during the first two decades of the twentieth century; meanwhile, corporations reacted to the free market by turning to government to protect their inherent inefficiency from the discipline of market conditions. This behavior is known as corporatism, but Kolko dubbed it "political capitalism." Kolko's thesis "that businessmen favored government regulation because they feared competition and desired to forge a government-business coalition" is one that is echoed by many observers today . Former Harvard professor Paul H. Weaver uncovered the same inefficient and bureaucratic behavior from corporations during his stint at Ford Motor Corporation (see Weaver's The Suicidal Corporation <1988>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko
http://users.crocker.com/~acacia/kolko.html
http://miltenoff.tripod.com/Kolko.html
http://www.stateofnature.org/liberalElitesAnd.html

[stockholmer]

5. don't forget to add in the privately-held Federal Reserve, as well as IMF, ECB, World Bank, BoE, BoC

etc etc, and their capstone controller, the BIS. The private bankers thus control the sovereign governments through debt and control of the monetary supply. The governments then write legislation to keep the trans-national corporations in power, as well as executing geo-strategic war that enforces the bankers bidding, in addition to their profiteering to the tune of trillions of dollars.

This is systemic control.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/67435351/The-network-of-global-corporate-control

[Owlet]

9. Great article at link

Thanks! It's more than a little complicated, but I think I got the main message.

[JaneQPublic]

7. Which are the GOOD banks, especially for credit cards?

For cash, I use a local community bank, but I would like to get away from BoA for credit cards.

I thought I was doing just that when I opened a Visa account with Working Assets, but it turned out to be just another BoA credit card account.

Any suggestions?

[PA Democrat]

8. Here are the Fab Five:

Citibank
Bank of America
JP Morgan Chase
Wachovia/ Wells Fargo
Goldman Sachs

[slipslidingaway]

10. knr n/t

[FarCenter]

12. Many of the principle players in the mortgage bubble were not banks

Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, CountryWide, GE Capital, Golden West, IndyMac, WaMu, GMAC, AIG, CIT and others were either investment banks only, or they were thrifts, or they were non-bank financial institutions.

None of the above were banks before the end of 2008 when they had either been merged into banks under the urging of the US Government in order to rescue them or had converted at least part of their corporation to a bank in order to access the Federal Reserve discount window to get loans.

Citigroup was really the only go-go player in the mortgage market during the bubble, and wholesaled a lot of mortgages into bad mortgage backed securities.

The JP Morgan investment bank did securitization, but mainly Chase and ex Bank One mortgages. The bad stuff in their portfolio mainly comes from Bear Stearns and WaMu.

Bank of America's bad stuff is mostly from CountryWide and Merrill Lynch.

Wells Fargo's bad stuff is mostly from Golden West via the Wachovia Merger, although both they and BofA have extra losses from having large operations in non-recourse mortgage states like CA, AZ, NV and FL.