Fuck the Banks

[AllentownJake]

They are the ones who got us into this mess in the first place. They were handed 350 billion dollars to unfreeze the credit markets and instead of unfreezing the credit markets they used the money to give themselves bonuses, buy other banks, and continue their old ways of giving expensive perks to their executives. They are laying off their middle class workers and protecting their Executive Suite. Let them go bankrupt and let their executives face lawsuits from investors.

No more money to them. Let them all fail for all I fucking care. Let the government become a direct lender and the banks that do good business will survive. It be cheaper in the long run than handing these assholes money only for them to continue to steal from the taxpayer. The ones that do bad business will fail. The ones that do good business will survive.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. It would've been impossible for banks to do what they did without 1st being deregulated ...

Yet on C-Span, Republicans were holding a meeting on how important deregulation is to healing this economy.

[FreakinDJ]

5. Fucking Morons - they just don't get it

The Average person on the street understands deregulation and Trickle Down theory got us in this mess

[Sarah Ibarruri]

28. I don't know if everyone does know it. There's monstrous illiteracy in the U.S. nt

[fasttense]

2. What I don't understand is since when do we turn over hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to CEO

banks and wall street gamblers without any plan at all. Our congress just handed them our tax dollars without any specific details on exactly what and where they can spend it. And Obama is going to do it again.

WTF, why are we being so absolutely reckless and irresponsible with our tax dollars? Have we gone crazy? Do we think CEOs, bankers and Wall Street gamblers are magically and mysteriously immune to corruption and crime? Of course they are going to waste and steal the money, when we hand it over to them with absolutely NO STRINGS attached. Aren't we giving the people who caused this mess our money? Have they suddenly changed their greedy, irresponsible ways?

All I can say is, Congress you sure are stupid, almost as stupid as bush thought you were. And Mr. President you better be attaching some strings to our money.

[FormerDittoHead]

10. It was a scam. They gambled that gov't would bail them out so they didn't change course. They won.

There is no one who can convince me that many banks didn't see what was going to happen months and months before it was a 'crisis'. But if their actions are a clue to their intentions, it's clear that they figured that 1) if everyone was doing it, whatever happens, the individual managers wouldn't be blamed and 2) they (the big players) could CREATE a "crisis" where the gov't would actually bail them out of it!

We all know that investment bankers / brokerage houses had their hooks into Bush from the days of trying to privatize Social Security early in his 2nd term. Bush didn't blink in his support for the bailout, and his ending Presidency gave the rest of the party enough coverage (in their minds) to blame him and not their party. There is no question in my mind that the timing of the 'crisis' was not a coincidence.

That was the tin foil hatted part, the rest is well known.

The whole problem, IMO, was the product of allowing banks to constantly buy each other up, getting "too big to fail". So, instead of little banks failing, now they're "too big to fail" and the government HAS to buy out their bad decisions.

This is the downside of the economies of scale. Ultimately, a company is run from a centralized management and policy, and that policy can be in error because it's lost, if you will, the economies of diversification.

The results, as we can now see, can be catastrophic.

[BzaDem]

3. We still can't let the banks go bankrupt, but we can nationalize them.

Letting them go bankrupt would be catastrophic both for the banking system now and future confidence in the banking system later.

But if we nationalize them, all shareholders are wiped out, some unsecured bond holders are wiped out, and the executives would presumably be fired and replaced with executives that look out for the interests of their new owner (the government).

[w4rma]

13. I think we can and I also think it would be good for confidence that we would not

allow bad businesses to stick around.

[Zynx]

4. Letting the banks go bankrupt hurts us more than them.

It is silly to hate a corporate entity. You can hate executives, but to hate the entity itself makes no sense.

[lonestarnot]

6. Can the blood suckers and nationalize.

[Zynx]

7. That at least wouldn't instantly crank unemployment up to 25%.

[lonestarnot]

8. But the order would be nationalize and then can.

[calico1]

9. I agree. We can't have an economy without

banks. We need to deal with the corrupt executives but letting the banking system die is just not an option.

[TBF]

21. It doesn't have to be private, though. Nationalize. n/t

[Two Americas]

27. not true

We have one of two options:

1. Capital managed so that it serves the producers and the people.

2. Capital controlling and exploiting the producers and the people.

Saying that "we have to have banks" neatly avoids that question, and always is used as an apology and a defense for option number two.

Since the New Deal, option number one has been in place in agriculture. That is why your access to food is not in the same shape as your home equity and 401K and wages and job security are now. You would be very hungry otherwise.

There is no "financial crisis" or "credit crunch" or foreclosures happening in farming as there is everywhere else. Government agencies protect the farmers from the financial industry and the banks and Wall Street, so that the people can eat. The same program could be used to make sure people are housed and working and have access to health care. It is a simple matter of getting the financial industry out of the power position. It can be done, has been done, and now must be done.

There is no credit crunch in farming, there is a shortage of applicants. Why is that? Because to qualify you have to commit to farming - to actually producing something. That is just about the only qualification. You cannot use the money, as everyone is trying to do, to make an investment in the hope of turning it and getting rich from it. No one wants to farm. Why is that? Because everyone has been seduced by the Reaganomics promise of the fast and easy buck.

Why work, why value work and the producers when you can get faaaaaabulously rich by cleverly turning, leveraging, investing, futuring, swapping, deriving and managing your portfolio? So the producers and the workers and the people are punished and impoverished, and the few, a very few, grab massive wealth. Pretty soon no one is producing anything, the workers are broke, the elderly, infirm and the children slide into desperate poverty, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down on us.

Asking "do we need banks" is asking the wrong question. That is like defending child abuse because "we need parents" and saying that if there were no parents, the children would be worse off.

[Two Americas]

25. the opposite is true, I think

Hate the system. Change the system. The system rewards - demands - certain anti-social and destructive behavior.

I will hate the entity. Otherwise we frogmarch a few sacrificial lambs, enjoy a media circus around that, pat ourselves on the back that the "problem has been solved" and "the system works," and are distracted from the root problem - domination of our lives and the economy and the government by the financial industry; the ascendancy of capital over labor.

The problem is not "a few bad apples." The problem is that only bad apples can succeed and are rewarded.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

31. and you think right, TA.

Those who profit from the "Bad Apple System" AND their defenders should be frogmarched!

[ronnykmarshall]

11. and fuck the workers?

Nice.

[WinkyDink]

12. Not while they have my pitiful accounts!

[w4rma]

14. Your accounts are insured to $250K. (nt)

[Zynx]

15. If the banks all go under, the FDIC doesn't have enough money.

That would require a huge bailout, at least as big as we have done so far.

[avaistheone1]

16. So we just spend more money to prop up the banks that are eventually

are going to fail? That doesn't make any sense.

That would create conditions when there would be even less FDIC money available.

[Zynx]

18. The point is that the banks need not fail in the first place.

That is not inevitable.

[avaistheone1]

20. I think you are wrong. There is plenty of expert opinion these banks

are going to fail regardless. They have already demonstrated their disregard for the American people by how they handled phase one of the bailout.

I think it is completely irresponsible to keep propping these banks up.

[girl gone mad]

17. better the money go to the account holders..

than towards paying off the bankers gambling debts.

[Zynx]

19. And when our system of credit is completely busted, what should we do then?

[Two Americas]

30. uh....

Prop back up, bail out and protect the ones who broke it, and help them get back in business so they can do it again? That doesn't seem like the best idea to me.

[TBF]

22. I'd rather bail out individual account holders up to 250K each then give more

million dollar bonuses to assholes. YMMV, of course.

[avaistheone1]

24. I would too. I am completely sick of the banksters and their greed.

[Hannah Bell]

32. Governments are the creators & guarantors of this thing you call "money".

[pleah]

23. I found this just for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brL1AKdhLyQ

Enjoy.

[ddeclue]

26. Cool ... funny! nt

[WyoHiker]

29. Local Credit Unions (eom)

[Holly_Hobby]

33. I think the problem truly is with our counterfeit currency

It's a giant Ponzi scheme that's imploding. It's too expensive to maintain any longer.

Disclaimer: I am not an economist and I did not sleep at a Holiday Inn last night.