Comments on: Axelrod And Emanuel Were Right (On The American Bank Oligarchs)

By: balti667

balti667 — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:50:10 +0000

I’m shocked at such a suggestion! Next, someone will say there’s gambling in Las Vega.

By: balti667

balti667 — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:46:30 +0000

Yes, _like_ blaming the drug dealer. But the drug dealer does nevertheless share the blame. The banks helped create and nurture the demand, by relentlessly telling its customers and prospective customers that they needed their bogus products. Indeed, to this day, CapitalOne, e.g., tells me to use my convenience checks “for money you deserve.” They have fostered a sense of entitlement without limit and without relief. An entrenched part of our consumer culture, they even pre-fill-in the convenience checks _for_ me and remind me that, if I don’t have some well-deserved vacation or needed jewelry (Bernie?) or home improvement or tuition in mind, I can still use it for money “just to have.” Didn’t Lehmann Brothers need some money “just to have?”

By: balti667

balti667 — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:24:41 +0000

A series of interesting points in that posting, leads me to suggest that mortgage bankers and the rest of the industry that ‘securitized’ packages of mortgages, really were in search of a market for their products. In the true spirit of professional marketing, they ‘created their market’ and left everyone feeling like they’d been part of a win-win deal. Having created their market, the inevitable next step was to expand their market, since corporate soundness and desirability was judged by quarter-to-quarter and year-over-year profit _increases_. And thus it was, simply by magical fiat (or decree): Poof! You qualify. Now _that’s_ the way to develop your market!

By: balti667

balti667 — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:06:21 +0000

“Why have a Board of Directors, if they’re not directing and ….”

But they were, have been, are and will be. The directive has been “dead simple:” maximize quarterly profits preferably within the bounds of the law, and, lacking that, at least do so from a defensible position. A bank CEO who needed the Board to explain its directives,…. well, that person wouldn’t be the CEO in the first place, would they.

By: balti667

balti667 — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:56:45 +0000

Pity. I think a transposition happened between his mouth and their ears. Likely, they heard “grudgingly uncooperative,” not “ungrudginglu cooperative.”

By: balti667

balti667 — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:54:27 +0000

On that severance pay suggestion…. Now, wouldn’t that be one week’s severance pay per year of service after 5 years of service, and one month’s severance after 20 years? (That should hold costs down.) We could “do the numbers” — to cut severance costs while maximizing the severance perceived value, and perhaps throw in a “pre-approved” credit card application or two to take the sting out of the deal. Isn’t that the real “banker way?”

By: Dennis Harrinton

Dennis Harrinton — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:34:31 +0000

The reason Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer oppose nationalization is because of the $$ they recieve from the banking industry.

By: Heather

Heather — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:09:30 +0000

Thank you so much for giving us an easily “digested” explanation for this continuing, downward spiral of the economy.

Nothing I’ve heard has made any sense until I watched you on Bill Moyers Journal.

I’ve watched, over decades, the misuse of credit & spending, both personal & governmental. This crash actually took a lot longer than I expected, probably due to some clever number crunching & dishonest reporting.

I thank you for giving us the clear, honest picture & solution to this tragic, greed infested circumstance in which we find ourselves.

Timothy says it best: For THE LOVE OF MONEY IS A ROOT OF ALL EVIL: and SOME WHOSE HEARTS WERE FIXED ON IT have been turned away from the faith, and BEEN WOUNDED WITH UNNUMBERED SORROWS. (1 Timothy 6:10 BBE)

By: Peter Stetler

Peter Stetler — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:47:06 +0000

Right! That’s the question: What do our top thinkers have to
say on this point? What are the vetting points? What are the possible consequences for the plausible, varied fixes?
Thank You

By: News Briefs 16-02-2009 | Psychics Services|Psychics Members Site|Psychics City|Course

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:50:25 +0000

[...] US banking oligarchs vs. everyone else: Sorting out the US banking fiasco comes down to one question — how tough are you willing to be on the people who control the country’s large banks? [...]

By: Peter Stetler

Peter Stetler — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:34:10 +0000

Mr. Johnson’s diagnosis sounds accurate, and the proposed treatment appears very effective. How about an implementation
suggestion. During Obama’s campaign, I was concerned about
how he would handle the power-money guys, not just here, but globally too. The real question to me pivots around the nature of the resistance from the players to their rapid and wholesale
displacement, which must occur to implement Mr. Johnson’s
solution. This is the analysis that deserves Mr. Johnson’s full
focus, in all its massive complexity and extremely formidable
consequences. I would appreciate hearing his views on the nature of the resistances, the strategies to combat them,
the effect on the world power-money distribution, the effect
on the regimes in China, Russia, etc., what the new power-money consortium would look like, and its new leverages and
threats differ from the previous constructions.
And lastly, please address the issue of the political feasibility
of accomplishing the change, since implementing these changes will most certainly be seen as revolutionary by the
people who actually run the whole show.
Thank You for your fine work!

By: John A. LaGrua

John A. LaGrua — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:39:30 +0000

A fine exposition of the core financial system problems .Concentration of such power is ultimately corrupting and against the public interest .Is a Glaas Steigal legislation an answer? Could the smaller institutions compete world wide?It would be most informative to see a conceptual construct of a future banking system The title of Simom Johnson’s blog would be appreciated .His is a clear voice in this current economic wilderness.Thank you.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:02:44 +0000

Who are the American “Banking Oligarchs”?

In the interview with Mr. Moyers, the Rockefellers and Standard Oil are cited as notable examples of business controlling the political sphere. We all know the names of the big banks in today’s market, but are there analogues for Rockefeller as well? Are there people today who have as much concentrated power as Rockefeller did in the early 20th century? If so, who are they?

By: Ben We

Ben We — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:50:13 +0000

simon J’s right on target.
we can not reward all this mismanagement at the Big Banks with more cash.
Ben and Jerry probably have it right respect to the ratio of Management to production worker salaries.Why not impose it on bankers- if we had half the board seats held by production workers that might help too.
No bank should be told they are too big to go broke!Many, if not m,ost should be declared bankrupt, sold and divided up. Yes, there will be big losses, but far less than if taxpayers money is guaranteedto support their mistakes.
On another theme, why don’t we go back to Econ.101 where trade is defined as “stuff for stuff?” That is not stuff for dollars! With trade balance defined as buying only as much as we match with goods we have to sell, we can get the trade balance evened out pretty quickly. And, we can make Made in American a reality again.

By: lefty27

lefty27 — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:38:32 +0000

Like a few other admitted non experts here, I am not well versed in “Economics” so my statement could well be naive also.

As someone said we have Bad banks already, and we want to create new Bad banks, maybe this is just using the wrong terms to describe what a Bad bank and I’m barking up the wrong tree. But it seems to me that the issue here is Debt (and probably some criminal activity) and who is going to pay for it.

If the big banks own all this trash, and it looks like they do, and the government makes them eat the losses, and puts money into “new healthy banks” I wonder how the losses from the big bad banks gets distributed throughout the financial world and in the real world also. It’s really hard to understand what this means. I’ll stop here. :)