OLD PROBLEMS REMAIN IN NEW YEAR: NO, VIRGINIA, THE ECONOMY IS NOT GETTING BETTER AS BANKS STILL RULE
Financial Reforms Are Being Watered Down As Bailouts Are Up
By Danny Schechter, author The Crime of Our Time
New York, January 4th: It's a new week, a new year, and some, erroneously believe a new decade. What's not new is the stranglehold the banks have on our economy quietly stashing more billions for more bonuses while still restricting the flow of credit. Bad loans have been supplanted by no loans.
Writers on the left continue to go after one bankster--the one we love to hate: Goldman Sachs which has become the poster boy for profiteering and even bad coffee served in their cafeterias. Most ignore the rest of the avaricious industry which is still volatile with big pockets of insolvency and dependence of government bailout funds.
While the media focused on the terror threat over Detroit, the terrifying reality in Detroit is ignored. AP reports, "DETROIT - One measure of how tough times are in the Motor City: Some of the offenders in jail don't want to be released; some who do get out promptly re-offend to head back where there's heat, health care and three meals a day.
"For the first time, I'm seeing guys make a conscious decision they'll be better off in prison than in the community, homeless and hungry," said Joseph Williams of New Creations Community Outreach, which assists ex-offenders."
With TV pumping out a steady diet of football, foolishness and constantly shifting breaking news, the people broken by the economic crisis are largely ignored.
What Americans don't know is that the US is forsaking advice and a chance to emulate what works in other countries.
While condemning the system in the old Russia, we are emulating the new by transferring wealth to our own oligarchs.
We have already forsaken England's National Health Service model for a plan to further enrich incompetent private insurers while ignoring London's new rules to tax banker bonuses and more tightly.
In fact, financial reforms are being watered down as the new Business Week reports on pro-business Democrats who are systematically watering down reforms. Financial journalist Gary Weiss calls our attention to this fear:
"A failure wouldn't surprise frustrated lawmakers disappointed by the turn in Washington. "My greatest fear for the last year has been an economic collapse," says Representative Brad Miller (D-N.C), who sits on Frank's House Financial Services Committee. "My second greatest fear was that the economy would stabilize and the financial industry would have the clout to defeat the fundamental reforms that our nation desperately needs. My greatest fear seems less likely"but my second greatest fear seems more likely every day."
More matter of factly, the New York Times reports, "big questions loom: Will the economy stage a robust recovery or just muddle along? Will the stunning rally in the stock market last? As the debate rages over how to prevent future crises, will Washington impose tough new rules on banks? More important, will banks fundamentally change the way they do business, or simply carry on as before?"
What do you think? There is, unfortunately, no laws stopping banks from carrying on as before.
With the public distracted by Christmas, terrorists and the fight between Fox and Time Warner over cable revenues, the government continued its bailouts in late December with billions more pumped in to mortgage giants Freddy and Fannie (even as their execs walk away with millions)
