There Is Nothing ‘Collateral’ About It When You Suffer the Damage
“Now you don’t talk so loud/Now you don’t feel so proud/ About havin’ to be scroungin’ for your next meal”-Bob Dylan
It is not that the big banks themselves are “too big to fail”. They are too big because they can cause all of us to fail. In the military terms, that tragedy is cleansed by the use of the innocuous sounding term, “collateral damage”.
The problem is this: One is just as dead from collateral damage as from a targeted hit.
We launched BreakUptheBigBanks.com because the political power wielded by the big banks is incompatible with a functioning democracy. Such political power renders regulation inadequate—we have already seen Congress bow to the will of the very people whom a year ago it rescued from oblivion.
That, fellow citizens, is power—naked, raw, and contemptuous of the public good.
This doomsday scenario is not based upon competing economic theories. We all know this to be true from our own painful and collective experience. No private institution should have that power—unaccountable, geared entirely their own self-interest, and able to cause massive ‘collateral damage’.
We have, therefore, launched BreakUptheBigBanks.com as a public service. It will take millions of you joining, signing our simple petition, and participating to make this successful.
There is no ideology behind this. It is just as compatible with conservative’s distrust of unaccountable political power as it is with liberal’s wariness of concentrated economic power.
Conservatives do not like regulation—once broken up, allowing the banks to operate within their prescribed realms will require far less regulation and bureaucrats to enforce, and far less micromanaging.
Liberals do not like concentrated economic power feathering its own nests at the expense of the general population—once broken up, the smaller banks will be far less able to effect the general population at all.
We can do it. Go to breakupthebigbanks.com, and participate, actively.
For the price of one latte, you will be able again to sleep soundly.
Preemptive CAVEAT: I’m not an economist, a CPA, or a financial consultant.
That said, this approach strikes me as a gross over simplification of the solution and a gross underestimation of the situation/problem. It’s another flyswatter aimed at killing a Tyrannosaurus size issue. Breaking up “bigness” and keeping the current paradigm of minimal regulatory control only allows for an eventual recreation of the current situation.
Corporations, by charter and law, and required to maximize profits for their shareholders. Without extensive regulations to set the boundaries of what a corporation can and cannot do, consolidation and, therefore, political influence and “gigantism” will be the result and we’ll be back to square one.
If you truly want to fix the problem then have Congress enact laws that pass Supreme Court muster to remove corporate contributions from the political process. Demand campaign finance reform that simply says “no one can directly contribute to a political campaign.” All campaign financing must come from a pool of money, collected by the government through whatever means necessary, from constituents’/taxpayers’ voluntary contributions, distributed to all “viable candidates”* on an equal basis.
* A viable candidate is determined to be anyone who can submit enough verified signatures from a majority of states (50% + 1) equal to 5% of the registered voters in each of those states.
If you don’t eliminate corporate and specific individual financing of political campaigns, you will NEVER end the corruption of a political system whose process is based on which party or candidate has the most money. If we have to see this evidence more than we have then we will NEVER understand the source of the problem.
In summary, this attempt by this organization, though honorable, even respectful, is quixotic and ultimately futile.