At 13:27 14/10/2011, Ed wrote:
Great ideas, but what are the chances of any of
them being implemented? Not very good, I'd say.
I agree. Besides, a lot of this is just
retribution. A few dollops of retribution is no
bad thing and I wouldn't mind seeing more than a
few bankers and city traders in the stocks or
breaking rocks but Matt Taibbi's suggestions
don't really answer to the really serious
underlying trends. One is that most advanced
(money-printing) governments and their (excessive
credit-making) sidekicks, the banks, are now
deeply in debt and there's little prospect of any
recovery from this unless there's superabundant
economic growth (based on what?), or taxation
over many years or high inflation. Another is
that we're now moving into a far more specialized
world than ever before with a consequent yawning
skills gap between the value-adders and the rest.
Also, because of automation we're moving into an
economy which simply doesn't need so many adult
workers. Yet another is that we're all becoming
largely locked into a dense urban way of life
with a standard repertoire of consumer goods. In
short, the last 300 years of the industrial
revolution has now come to an end and an
altogether new type of society and government has to emerge.
Keith
My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters
Hit bankers where it hurts
by: Matt Taibbi
Protesters with the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement demonstrate in New York.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice
now, and I love it. The protests building at
Liberty Square and spreading over Lower
Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer
to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle
finger to the financial elite. The protesters
picked the right target and, through their
refusal to disband after just one day, the right
tactic, showing the public at large that the
movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.
But... there's a but. And for me this is a
deeply personal thing, because this issue of how
to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my
life for years now, and it's hard for me not to
see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and
more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that
the banks were secretly thrilled in the early
going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.
Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled
thievery and corruption, with tens of millions
entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to
artificially inflated commodity prices, and
millions more displaced from their homes by
corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline
from the first week of protests against the
financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.
That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary
challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of
Wall Street corruption, which is that it's
extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the
modern financial elite in a simple visual. The
essence of this particular sort of oligarchic
power is its complexity and day-to-day
invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and
insider trading and market manipulation, to
backroom dominance of government and the
usurping of the regulatory structure from
within, simply can't be seen by the public or
put on TV. There just isn't going to be an
iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs,
Citigroup or Bank of America just 62 million
Americans with zero or negative net worth,
scratching their heads and wondering where the
hell all their money went and why their votes
seem to count less and less each and every year.
No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall
Street. And I think the movement's basic
strategy to build numbers and stay in the
fight, rather than tying itself to any
particular set of principles makes a lot of
sense early on. But the time is rapidly
approaching when the movement is going to have
to offer concrete solutions to the problems
posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a
short but powerful list of demands. There are
thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too
Big to Fail" financial companies now sometimes
called by the more accurate term "Systemically
Dangerous Institutions" are a direct threat to
national security. They are above the law and
above market consequence, making them more
dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand
mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms
in America, and they need to be dismantled; a
good start would be to repeal the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the
separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1
percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a
0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives
would generate enough revenue to pay us back for
the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to
fight the deficits the banks claim to be so
worried about. It would also deter the endless
chase for instant profits through computerized
insider-trading schemes like High Frequency
Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the
job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making
sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.
3. No public money for private lobbying. A
company that receives a public bailout should
not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money
to lobby against him. You can either suck on the
public teat or influence the next presidential
race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once
and let the people choose the next president and Congress.
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we
need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and
indefensible carried-interest tax break, which
allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and
John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on
their billions in gambling income, while
ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching
kids and putting out fires. I defy any
politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.
5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new
laws preventing Wall Street executives from
getting bonuses upfront for deals that might
blow up in all of our faces later. It should be:
You make a deal today, you get company stock you
can redeem two or three years from now. That
forces everyone to be invested in his own
company's long-term health no more Joe
Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses
for destroying the AIGs of the world.
To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt
Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker
is to put a man to a decision for all his
chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and
Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that
they're never forced, by the media or anyone
else, to put all their cards on the table. If
Occupy Wall Street can do that if it can speak
to the millions of people the banks have driven
into foreclosure and joblessness it has a
chance to build a massive grassroots movement.
All it has to do is light a match in the right
place, and the overwhelming public support for
real reform not later, but right now will be there in an instant.
This story is from the October 27, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/10/
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