For 66 years the Glass-Steagall act reduced the risks in the banking system. Eight years after the act was repealed, the banking system blew up threatening the international economy. US taxpayers were forced to come up with $750 billion dollars, a sum much larger than the Pentagon’s budget, in order to bail out the banks. This huge sum was insufficient to do the job. The Federal Reserve had to step in and expand its balance sheet by $4 trillion in order to protect the solvency of banks declared “too big to fail.”
How many Americans know that America has privatized prisons, the shares of which are listed on stock exchanges? Free market ideologues provided cover for corrupt Republican politicians to divert taxpayers’ hard-earned money to favored political insiders with the false claim that prisons run by private owners are more cost effective. A Mother Jones reporter took a job as a private prison guard and found that private prisons are places of unimaginable violence.
Hillary Clinton will not tame Wall Street. She'll talk the talk, but unlike Sanders, she won't walk the walk. She and her husband have always been a part of the problem. She defends Bill's record on Wall Street, so how can Hillary now claim to part of the solution? And by the way, Michael Douglas endorsed her.
Are we witnessing the corruption of central banks? Are we observing the money-creating powers of central banks being used to drive up prices in the stock market for the benefit of the mega-rich?
The Baldwin Piano Company was once the largest US-based manufacturer of pianos. The company can trace its origins back to 1857 by Dwight Hamilton Baldwin. By 1913, business had become brisk, with Baldwin exporting pianos to thirty-two countries. By 1953 the company had doubled production.
While America still suffers with repressed wages, increasing poverty and a vanishing middle class, Wall Street and big Multinational Corporations are having a party. Bonuses increased 15% and are back to their pre-financial crisis excesses Corporations hording cash offshore increased 11.8% in 2013 to a whopping $1.95 trillion.
It is official. Detroit is bankrupt. Detroit is not only bankrupt they can now trash pensions owed to city workers. That is police, fire, hospital and a host of workers counting on those pensions for retirement. The U.S court ruling allows for a bankruptcy type for cities and towns, Chapter 9, to proceed and specifically puts pensions on the fair game bankruptcy chopping block.
In This Crisis It's Not Stupidity, It's the Money: Three Relevant Laws
There are three basic laws about discussion, especially political discussion, that are useful in the contentious government situation we have today. The third of these laws is especially relevant because it warns us that what is happening in Congress is not a passing aberration, but in fact a threat to democracy in our country.
How the Financial Elite Con Us into Wanting the Wrong Thing
Competitive or self-regulating market economies promote dynamic creative destruction and rebirth—led by people’s needs, wants and desires, thus properly directing economic progress. Historically, competitive market economies are a relatively new economic system, and while very productive, they are not self-sustaining, are unstable and require significant state support and regulation to function properly.
The headlines blaze criminal charges for SAC Capital Advisors, a wayward hedge fund. Yet if one reads the Southern district of New York indictment, it is fairly obvious the owner is getting off the hook.
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