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July 28, 2915
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Agenda
Note re. this posting.
This posting is extremely long.
I hope you will read it all in one, two, or three settings. It all is important to our future,
particularly the very last article.
Floyd
1. FROM FLOYD
TO
ANY OF YOU
WHO MAY STILL BE OUT THERE.
2. Bernie Sanders Draws Biggest Turnout for Maine
3. 10 Reasons Bernie Sanders Is
‘Rockin’ in the Free World’
4. Bernie moves to Phoenix ,
Arizona
5. The Rally to Economic Populism
6. Over 11,000 attend Bernie's Phoenix, Arizona rally, his
largest to date
7. Hillary
Clinton’s Glass-Steagall
FROM FLOYD
TO
ANY OF YOU
WHO MAY STILL BE OUT THERE.
A BIG hello to any
of you who may still be out there. I
have not been able to provide any postings since May 29, 2015. I have had a pretty good reason for this dry
spell. I suffered a stroke. Thank
goodness, it was what they call a minni stroke.
It affected my left leg, foot, arm, and hand. They have pretty much recovered now, with the
exception of my left leg and foot.
However, I am now able to get around and I am going to try to get back
to my postings. I am sure I have lost
most of you, but maybe the word will get out again and once again you will join
me.
I just checked to
see if any of you had been checking in to see if I had any new postings. To my surprise, 86 of you have checked in
during the past month. Of those 17 were
from Russia , 3 from Poland , 2 from France ,
2 from Portugal , and 1 from Ukraine
2016
ELECTION
Sometime ago, I said
that I wasn't going to get into the 2016 election discussions until about June
2016. I simply was turned off by all
that was taking place.
WELL THAT
HAS REALLY CHANGED for me. I don't know how many of you are familiar
with Senator Bernie Sanders (I) Vermont
Currently,
in polling, he is ahead of all Republicans and in second place with
Democrats. He is drawing larger crowds
than any other candidate.
I URGE YOU TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE FOLLOWING
ARTICLES.
~~~
Bernie
Sanders Draws Biggest Turnout for Maine
Author: Craig Brown
| EcoWatch | News Report
Published: July 15, 2015
The
Sanders campaign originally booked Portland
The
Cross Arena (formerly Cumberland County Civic
Center ) is Maine
An hour
before the rally’s scheduled 7 p.m. start time, long lines snaked through
downtown Portland with thousands waiting to get in. (The Common Dreams offices
are just a block away).
Bernie
packed the house. The Bangor Daily News reported:
The
2016 election may be 16 months away, but you wouldn’t know it from the thousands
of people who turned out Monday evening to cheer on Democratic presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland.
What
was scheduled as a town hall forum had become a full-blown rally by Monday
night. Sanders’ speech was delayed by 20
minutes as organizers let in the throngs of people still awaiting entry. Estimates pegged the crowd at 8,000 to 9,000
people.
(At
7:15 p.m., several of our staff writers were turned away at the doors to the
then-full arena; a couple hundred seats behind a curtain were blocked off
keeping the turnout number below the 9,500 figure).
It was
epic. And, as Bernie Sanders says, “This campaign is
catching fire for a simple reason, and the simple reason is we are telling the truth.”
No one
we spoke with could remember a recent Maine U.S.
The
biggest Democratic rally in Maine ’s history
appears to be the 1960 Election Eve visit to Lewiston
~~~
10 Reasons Bernie Sanders Is ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’
Author:
Stefanie Spear
| EcoWatch | News Analysis
Published:
July 13, 2015
It’s hard not to #FeelTheBern these days, that is the Bernie Sanders energy that is storming the
nation. Just last week Sanders had the largest turnout of any presidential
candidate so far in this primary race with nearly 10,000 people attending
his speech in Madison, Wisconsin.
Clearly, people are finding it refreshing to actually believe the campaign promises
being touted by a candidate. A self-described "democratic socialist,"
Sanders, 73, is a U.S. Senator for Vermont
I had
the chance to see Sen. Sanders in Denver ,
Colorado University of Denver
This event was just days after Donald Trump announced his run for president while
playing Neil Young’s classic tune “Rockin’ in the Free World.” The
next day, Young released a statement saying, “Yesterday my song
‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ was used in an announcement for a U.S.
However, Young, a Canadian citizen, “is a supporter of
Bernie Sanders for president of the United States of America Hamilton Gymnasium at the Richie Center in
Denver
"This campaign,
proclaimed Sanders, is about a political movement of millions of people who
stand up and loudly and proudly proclaim that this nation and our government
belongs to all of us and not just a handful of billionaires.”
The crowd finally settled down after a very
warm welcome. Sanders began by saying, “This campaign is not
about me. It’s not about Hillary Clinton. It’s not about Jeb Bush. It’s not about any other candidate. This
campaign is about you, your kids and your parents. It is about creating a political
movement of millions of people who stand up and loudly and proudly
proclaim that this nation and our government belong to all of us and not
just a handful of billionaires.”
Sanders went on to talk about democracy. He said, “Democracy is not about the last
election in which 63 percent of the American people and 80 percent of young
people did not vote. That’s not
democracy. Democracy is when people from one end of this country to the
other, stand-up and say that there is nothing that a great nation
can not accomplish.”
“This
country today, in my view,” Sanders continued, “faces more serious problems in
any time since the great depression, and if you add to that the planetary
crisis of climate change
it may well be that today, in our time, we face more challenges than anytime in
the modern history of this country
Sanders then dug deep on many issues,
including income inequality—which he calls the greatest moral, economic
and political issue of our time—health care, outrageous costs for a
college education, unemployment rates, low minimum wage, gender inequality,
LGBT rights, paid sick leave and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
Next he tackled what he calls “one of the worst
decisions in the history of our country.” He said, “By a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme
court said to the wealthiest people in our country, ‘okay guys, you already own
much of America , we are now
going to give you the opportunity to own the United States
He explained, “This issue of campaign finance reform is
so important because it impacts every other issue of concern.”
And that is why the one campaign promise
Sanders has made so far is that he will have a litmus test for
his nominees for the Supreme Court and, as Sanders said, “that litmus test is
that anybody I nominate will make it clear to this country that they will
rehear Citizens United and vote to overturn it.”
“The Koch brothers alone—second wealthiest family in
America, an extremely rightwing family,” Sanders continued, “will spend more money on this election cycle than
either the Democratic or Republican parties … This is not democracy. You are looking at an oligarchy form of
government.”
And, as everyone expected, Sanders then launched into
his pledge to fight climate change. “We
have the moral responsibilities to make sure that the climate that we
leave to our kids and grandkids is habitable. The debate is over, maybe
with the exception of Fox television.
Other than that scientists have almost unanimously agreed that
A, climate change is real, B, it is caused by human activity with the emission
of carbon, and C, it is already causing devastating problems here in
our country and around the world.”
“And they have said that while the problems are very
serious right now,” Sanders continued, “they will only get much, much worse if
we don’t seize a short window of opportunity to transform our energy
system away from fossil fuels and toward renewable
energy.”
“If we continue business as usual, if we do not
transform our energy system that, by the end of this century, the planet Earth
will be between 5 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. What that will mean is more and more drought,
more flooding, more extreme weather, more acidification of the
ocean, more rising sea level. It will
also be a huge national security issue for the entire world.”
Sanders then blessed Pope
Francis “for speaking out in a way that nobody in Congress
would ever speak out about what money and inequality is doing to people all
over the world, and now he’s speaking out on climate change.”
He finished by saying, “If we stand together. If we do not let people divide us by race, by
whether we were born in America or born in Mexico, whether we are gay or
whether we are straight … we can create the political revolution that
this country needs.”
And then, “Rockin’ in the Free World” enveloped
the gymnasium.
~~~
Tue Jul 14, 2015 at 06:58 PM
PDT
Bernie moves to Phoenix, Arizona "town
meeting" to convention center, campaign reporting 8,000 RSVPs by
james321Follow
UPDATE @BernieSanders
moves #PHX town
hall Saturday to @PhoenixConvCtr
room 3-4x size. Campaign reports 8K RSVPs.
Bernie said he "needed a bigger
room."
Maybe Madison was just
another "liberal college town." Maybe Portland was just
another "liberal New England city."
But what about Phoenix Phoenix , Arizona
Folks, I'm
getting excited. Very excited. Bernie's
"town meeting" has become a convention center rally. And the
"town meeting" -- excuse me, convention center rally -- isn't even
happening until this Saturday, July 18. Perhaps we'll see 10,000?
Live in Phoenix
~~~
The Rally to Economic Populism—Thanks to Bernie +
Organizing. Hillary?
Author: Roger Hickey
| Campaign for America's Future | Op-Ed
Published:
July 14, 2015
It seems like overnight. Americans’ attitudes are changing on social
issues – like gay marriage and the flying of the Confederate flag at state
capitols. But the changes seem fast only
if you ignore the centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, and repression, before that
rapid “overnight” change. The flip in
public opinion (or at least awareness) was often purchased by blood – and by
decades of organizing.
But what about economic change? How long until all African Americans – and
whites and Latinos – can get a good job with a future? When will all gay and lesbian Americans – and
everyone else – be able to encourage their kids to go to college, confident
that they won’t have to burden them with debt, like indentured servants? And will change come fast enough to America’s
carbon-intensive energy system, which now worsens climate change with every day
that action to retool our economy is delayed?
Now, seemingly overnight, a new populist movement
addressing those economic issues is dominating the political debate. The immediate reason is the
presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, who is drawing huge crowds, raising
serious money, and rising dramatically in the public opinion polls. But Bernie is also campaigning on a platform
that has been developed, tested, and put on the national agenda by a generation
of progressive thinkers, political leaders like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and generations of
organizers. Just as with the “overnight” changes in attitudes on social issues,
activists have been working hard for years to elevate the issues of economic
inequality, full-employment and economic growth, retirement security, and the
question of who owns our democracy. While
more controversial, because the economic agenda challenges the power of
corporations and big banks, polls show the agenda of the new populist movement
gains the support of the great majority of Americans.
In April, at a
national conference of grassroots organizers, three large organizing networks
joined with the Campaign for America Alliance , USAction, the Alliance
Please endorse the Populism 2015
Platform for People and the Planet and take it into the 2016
debate – and keep fighting for it after the election. And use the platform to judge Hillary Clinton’s economic policy speech to be
delivered on Monday. Below each of our
12 planks, we show (indented) the corresponding work of the following:
·
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Economic Agenda for America: 12 Steps Forward (Dec. 2014).
·
The MoveOn-Robert Reich Big Picture video series – Twelve Ideas to Save the Economy
·
and the Roosevelt Institute’s Rewriting the
Rules of the American Economy, by Joseph Stiglitz.
Populism2015:
Building the Movement for People and the Planet
1. Rebuild America
Sanders
Platform #1. We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling
infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports,
railroads and schools. (Sanders has
since introduced a bill that would invest $1 trillion
over several years to rebuild America
Sanders
Platform #3. We need to develop new economic models to increase job creation
and productivity. Instead of giving huge
tax breaks to corporations which ship our jobs to China
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Bring us to full
employment, by increasing investments in our future.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Provide genuine economic
security and opportunity for all Americans by expanding access to the essentials
of middle-class life.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Reform monetary policy to
prioritize full employment.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Reinvigorate public
investment and invest in large-scale infrastructure renovation.
2. Raise Wages, Empower Workers
and Reverse Inequality.
Inequality has reached new extremes, as more and more jobs become
contingent and part-time, with low pay and few benefits. We should lift the floor under every worker by
guaranteeing a living wage, paid sick and vacation days, and affordable health
care. We should empower workers to form
unions and bargain collectively. We must curb perverse CEO compensation
policies that give executives personal incentives to plunder their own
companies.
Sanders
Platform #4. Union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher
wages and benefits earn substantially more than non-union workers. We need
legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in
support of a union, they can form a union.
Sanders
Platform #5. Raise the federal minimum
wage to a living wage. No one in this
country who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty.
The Economic Policy Institute’s Raising America’s Pay
project outlines an array of policies to raise wages. But they say the
best way to deliver broadly shared wage growth is “through monetary and
budgetary policy that prioritizes full employment—thereby tightening the labor
market so that employers have to offer pay increases to get and keep the
workers they need.”
Reich/MoveOn: Watch Strengthen
Unions here. Bob
show strengthening unions is a key way to attack economic inequality.
Reich/MoveOn: Watch Fight for $15 here. Bob joins a growing movement to
increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Reform the labor market
to ensure that everyone benefits from an economy that is working at full steam.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Strengthen the right to
bargain.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Restructure CEO pay.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Increase funding for
enforcement and raise penalties for violating labor standards.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Raise the minimum wage
and raise the income threshold for mandatory overtime.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Governments should grant
public contracts only to corporations that meet high labor standards.
3. Invest in a Green Economy.
Catastrophic climate change is a clear and present danger. The United States
Sanders
Platform #2. The United
States
Reich/MoveOn: Watch Make
Polluters Pay here. Reich says instead of investing in
dirty fuels, let’s divest from polluters, start charging them for poisoning our
skies, and then invest the revenue so that it benefits everyone.
4. Eliminate Institutionalized
Racism to Open Opportunity to All.
In a society of increasing diversity, ending systemic racial
disparities is vital to building economic prosperity. This begins with
comprehensive immigration reform, expanded voting rights and an end to mass
incarceration and the systematic criminalization of people of color.
Reich/MoveOn: Watch End Mass
Incarceration here. Bob says our criminal justice system is racist – and it’s a
disaster for our economy.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Reform the criminal
justice system to reduce incarceration rates.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Reform immigration law by
providing a pathway to citizenship.
5. Guarantee Women’s Economic
Equality.
We will ensure that women are guaranteed the same pay,
protections and opportunities as men in the workplace and in society. Families
must have access to high-quality child care and paid leave from the workplace
for childbirth, illness and vacation. Women must also be guaranteed affordable
health care and a secure retirement – with Social Security credit for work in
the household.
Sanders
Platform #6. Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male
counterparts make. We need pay equity in our country – equal pay for equal
work.
Reich/MoveOn: Watch Help
Working Families here. Reich outlines key policies that
will help working families succeed economically, including universal child
care, paid family leave, and ensuring equal pay for equal work.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Promote pay equity.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Subsidize child care.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Protect women’s access to
reproductive health services.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Legislate paid sick leave
and paid family leave.
6. Provide a High-Quality
Education to Every Child.
Every child must have the right to high-quality, free public
education from preschool to college. This requires providing the basics –
preschool, smaller classes, summer and after-school programs, and skilled
teachers. Free four-year, post-high school education should be available for
all who seek it. We must also provide relief to the generation now burdened
with a student debt that they may never pay off.
Sanders
Platform #8. Quality education in America
Reich/MoveOn: Watch Reinvent
Education here. In Reinvent Education, Reich lays
out six “to-dos” to fix a broken education system.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Invest in early childhood
through child benefits, home visiting, and pre-K.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Increase access to higher
education through more public financing, restructuring student loans, and
increasing scrutiny of for-profit schools.
7. Expand Shared Security for the
21st Century.
No child should go hungry in America America
Sanders
Platform #10. The United
States
Sanders
Platform #11. We must strengthen the
social safety net, not weaken it. Instead of cutting Social Security, Medicare,
Medicaid and nutrition programs, we should be expanding these programs.
Reich/MoveOn: Watch Expand
Social Security here. Bob explains it’s time to “scrap the cap” so we can expand Social
Security.
Reich/MoveOn: In The Medicare
Solution,
Bob makes a stellar case for Medicare for all!
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Make health care
affordable and universal – and control health care costs by allowing government
bargaining.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Increase retirement
security by reducing transactions costs and the exploitation of retirees, and
expanding Social Security.
8. Enforce Fair Taxes on
Corporations and the Wealthy.
Our tax code rigs the rules to favor the few. Multinationals pay
lower tax rates than small domestic businesses. Billionaire investors pay lower rates than
their secretaries. Top income tax rates
have been lowered even as working people face ever-higher sales taxes and fees.
It is time for the rich and corporations
to pay their fair share of taxes so that we can invest in an economy that will
work for all.
Sanders
Platform #12. At a time of massive
wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country
which is based on ability to pay It is not acceptable that major profitable
corporations have paid nothing in federal income taxes, and that corporate CEOs
in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their
secretaries.
Reich/MoveOn: Watch End
Corporate Welfare here. No more handouts for Big Oil, no
more special tax breaks for Wall Street.
Reich/MoveOn: Watch Raise
the Estate Tax here. Reich makes the case for reducing inequality and generating an
additional $448 billion in federal revenue over ten years from the wealthiest
Americans by restoring the estate tax to the level it was in the late 1990s.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Enact pro-growth,
pro-equality tax policies.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Enact a financial
transactions tax.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Raise the top marginal
rate.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Enact a ‘Fair Tax’ by
taxing all forms of income at the same rate,
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Encourage U.S.
9. Forge a Global Strategy that
Works for Working People.
Our global trade and tax policies are rigged by multinational
companies to drive down pay and worker protections while harming the
environment. We need more but balanced trade, global standards that protect the
rights of workers, consumers and the environment. That requires a crackdown on tax havens,
currency manipulation, and deals that allow corporation to trample basic labor
rights here and abroad.
Sanders
Platform #7. We must end our disastrous
trade policies (NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China ,
etc.) which enable corporate America
to shut down plants in this country and move to China
Reich/MoveOn: Taking
on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Restore balance to global
trade agreements.
10. Make Wall Street
Financial deregulation has devastated our economy and protected
banks that are too big to fail, too big to manage and too big to jail. The financial casino fosters ever more
dangerous speculation, while investment in the real economy lags. The resulting booms and busts devastate
families and small businesses. We need to break up the big banks, levy a
speculation tax, and provide low-income families with safe and affordable
banking services. We should crack down on payday lenders and other schemes that
exploit vulnerable working families.
Sanders
Platform #9. Financial institutions
cannot be an island unto themselves, standing as huge profit centers outside of
the real economy. The greed,
recklessness and, illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this
country into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. They are too powerful to be reformed. They must be broken up.
Reich/MoveOn: Watch Tame Wall Street
here. Reich lays out the case for busting up the big banks.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Fix the Financial Sector.
End ‘too big to fail’.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Reform Federal Reserve governance.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Regulate the shadow
banking sector and end offshore banking.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Bring transparency to all
financial markets and enforce rules with stricter penalties.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Reduce credit and debit
card fees.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Expand access to banking
services through a postal savings bank.
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Rebalance the rules for
bankruptcy by expanding coverage to homeowners and students.
11. Change Priorities to Address
Real Security Needs.
Our current national security policies commit us to policing the
world. The result costs lives and drains
public resources. We need a real
security policy that makes military intervention a last resort, and focuses on
global threats like climate change, poverty and inequality. We should reduce military budgets and properly
support humanitarian programs.
12.
Fight for Democracy and Curb the Power of Big Money.
From big-money politics to the assault on the right to vote and a
corrupted lobby culture in Washington
Reich/MoveOn: Get Big Money
Out of Politics! – the piece of work that will make
everything else possible. We
celebrate the work of Public Citizen, People for the American Way
Stiglitz/Roosevelt: Reform political
inequality.
– – – –
In a May 13 article, entitled The Progressive Challenge, my
colleague, Robert Borosage described the work of various think tanks and
organizing groups in outlining a progressive agenda:
·
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Progressive Agenda,”
aimed at income inequality.
·
The Center for Community Change’s Putting Families First: Good Jobs for All.
·
The Economic Policy Institute Project on Raising America’s Pay.
·
And of course, the Progressive Caucus’ The People’s Budget.
·
The Roosevelt Institute offered “Rewriting the
Rules of the American Economy,“ written by Nobel economist Joseph
Stiglitz,
·
The Center for American Progress’ Commission on Inclusive Prosperityreport,
chaired by former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Borosage writes,
“All of these are bold efforts to address the central issue of
the day: an economy of increasing inequality that does not work for working
people. All call for major long-term
public investment to rebuild America
Virtually all want a new trade policy that will deal with
currency manipulation. All call for
extensive reforms to insure that the rewards of growth are widely shared:
raising the floor under workers (hiking the minimum wage, guaranteeing paid
sick days, vacation days and family leave, adjusting overtime, etc), empowering
workers to form unions and bargain collectively and, rolling back the excesses
that have bloated CEO pay packages. All
put basic equity at the center of economic growth – immigration reform, an end
to mass incarceration, pay equity for women.
Virtually all call for major investment in education from
universal pre-K to affordable college. Most envision an expansion of Social
Security, affordable health care, and other shared security programs.
These platforms are bold progressive calls for government action
to fix the rules that have been rigged to favor the few. All argue that inequality is not inevitable,
not an act of nature, but a product of policy and of power.
And no matter who gets elected progressives are going to have
to keep pushing hard – and building a movement – around the evolving
comprehensive economic agenda for justice and prosperity.
~~~
Sat Jul 18, 2015 at 08:23 PM
PDT
Over 11,000 attend Bernie's Phoenix, Arizona rally, his
largest to date
Bernie Sanders exceeded expectations in
Madison, Wisconsin.
And then he did it again in Portland,
Maine.
Well, tonight,
in Phoenix Phoenix
Tonight more than 11,000 friends and I sent a powerful
message to the billionaire class: You can’t have it all!
~~~
Hillary Clinton’s
Glass-Steagall
Author: Robert Reich
| NationofChange | Op-Ed
Published:
July 15, 2015
Hillary
Clinton won’t propose reinstating a bank break-up law known as the
Glass-Steagall Act – at least according to Alan Blinder, an economist who has
been advising Clinton Clinton
It’s a
mistake politically because people who believe Hillary Clinton is still too
close to Wall Street will not be reassured by her position on Glass-Steagall. Many will recall that her husband led the way
to repealing Glass Steagall in 1999 at the request of the big Wall Street
banks.
It’s a big
mistake economically because the repeal
of Glass-Steagall led directly to the 2008
Wall Street
Some
background: During the Roaring Twenties, so much money could be made by
speculating on shares of stock that several big Wall Street banks began selling
stock along side their traditional banking services – taking in deposits and
making loans.
Some
banks went further, lending to pools of speculators that used the money to pump
up share prices. The banks sold the
shares to their customers, only to have the share prices collapse when the
speculators dumped them.
For the
banks, it was an egregious but hugely profitable conflict of interest.
After
the entire stock market crashed in 1929, ushering in the Great Depression, Washington
Another
was to prevent the kinds of conflicts of interest that resulted in such losses,
and which had fueled the boom and subsequent bust. Under the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, banks
couldn’t both gamble in the market and also take in deposits and make loans. They’d have to choose between the two.
“The
idea is pretty simple behind this one,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said a few days ago, explaining her bill to
resurrect Glass-Steagall. “If banks want to engage in high-risk trading — they
can go for it, but they can’t get access to ensured deposits and put the
taxpayers on the hook for that reason.”
For
more than six decades after 1933, Glass-Steagall worked exactly as it was
intended to. During that long interval few banks failed and no financial panic
endangered the banking system.
But the
big Wall Street banks weren’t content. They wanted bigger profits. They thought they could make far more money by
gambling with commercial deposits. So
they set out to whittle down Glass-Steagall.
Finally,
in 1999, President Bill Clinton struck a deal with Republican Senator Phil
Gramm to do exactly what Wall Street wanted, and repeal Glass-Steagall
altogether.
What
happened next? An almost exact replay of
the Roaring Twenties. Once again, banks originated fraudulent loans and sold
them to their customers in the form of securities. Once again, there was a huge conflict of
interest that finally resulted in a banking crisis.
This
time the banks were bailed out, but millions of Americans lost their savings,
their jobs, even their homes.
A
personal note. I worked for Bill Clinton
as Secretary of Labor and I believe most of his economic policies were sound. But during those years I was in fairly
continuous battle with some other of his advisers who seemed determined to do
Wall Street’s bidding.
On
Glass-Steagall, they clearly won.
To this
day, some Wall Street apologists argue Glass-Steagall wouldn’t have prevented
the 2008 crisis because the real culprits were nonbanks like Lehman Brothers
and Bear Stearns.
Baloney.
These nonbanks got their funding from
the big banks in the form of lines of credit, mortgages, and repurchase
agreements. If the big banks hadn’t
provided them the money, the nonbanks wouldn’t have got into trouble.
And why
were the banks able to give them easy credit on bad collateral? Because
Glass-Steagall was gone.
Other
apologists for the Street blame the crisis on unscrupulous mortgage brokers.
Surely
mortgage brokers do share some of the responsibility. But here again, the big banks were accessories
and enablers.
The
mortgage brokers couldn’t have funded the mortgage loans if the banks hadn’t
bought them. And the big banks couldn’t
have bought them if Glass-Steagall were still in place.
I’ve
also heard bank executives claim there’s no reason to resurrect Glass-Steagall
because none of the big banks actually failed.
This is
like arguing lifeguards are no longer necessary at beaches where no one has
drowned. It ignores the fact that the big banks were bailed out. If the government hadn’t thrown them
lifelines, many would have gone under.
Remember?
Their balance sheets were full of junky paper, non-performing loans, and
worthless derivatives. They were bailed
out because they were too big to fail. And the reason for resurrecting Glass-Steagall
is we don’t want to go through that ever again.
As
George Santayana famously quipped, those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it. In the roaring
2000’s, just as in the Roaring Twenties, America’s big banks used insured
deposits to underwrite their gambling in private securities, and then dump the
securities on their customers.
It
ended badly.
This is
precisely what the Glass-Steagall Act was designed to prevent – and did prevent
for more than six decades.
Hillary
Clinton, of all people, should remember.
~~~
Well folks, if the good Lord is willing and the creek
don't rise, I'll try hard to talk with you agian next Friday July 31, 2015.
God Bless You All
&
God Bless the United States of America
Floyd
