Republicans Support Crooked Bankers

Why are all our homes "banked owned"? Why do we borrow from "commercial" banks for our home loans at a much higher rate of interest than what the banks pay to the Fed? Why do we have commercial banks acting as "middle men" to access our country's money supply? Sign my petition if you agree.

Why can't we borrow directly from the Fed at the same low rate? Why can't the Fed open a few thousand "branch offices" for us, and allow us to borrow like the commercial banks can borrow? And why do the commercial banks always have the tallest and most elaborate skyscrapers?

These big commercial U.S. banks are now in talks with state prosecutors to settle claims of improper mortgage practices, and have been offered a deal that may limit their legal liabilities in return for a multibillion-dollar payment, the Financial Times recently reported. The talks aim to settle allegations that banks including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial (who used to be GMAC), seized the homes of delinquent borrowers and broke state laws by employing so-called "robosigners," workers who signed off on foreclosures.

The New York Times reports that the global economy faces a decade-long stagnation because governments are pursuing deficit cuts and other austerity measures rather than providing the needed stimulus packages, said a United Nations economic report released Tuesday. Instead of new regulation of the financial system to address the problems that helped bring on the recession in 2007-8, governments in the United States and Europe are trying to woo the very speculators who helped cause the problem. 

Republicans don't want to reform the banks - they want to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act and eliminate the new Consumer Protection Bureau. The Republicans wouldn't allow Elizabeth Warren's nomination to head the Consumer Protection Bureau, so their new nominee, Richard Cordray. just told a Senate committee that he would make it a priority “to streamline and cut back” a mountain of regulations that has grown up over the last 30 years, which he said excessively burdened some banks and discourages them from lending money to consumers.

But wait a minute...aren't most of the major banks already being sued for making too many loans with adjustable rate mortgages, then having the taxpayers bail them out, so that they could buy other banks, so they could then make modified loans, so that they could still foreclose on homeowners anyway...even if they didn't even hold the title to the mortgage? (Remember that guy who foreclosed on Back of America?)

The banks. These are the entities that the Republicans most cherish, and they are owned by the banks. I'd like to make a modification on the GOP leaders and then foreclose on every one of them.

And why are the Republicans attempting to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, thereby re-de-regulating the crooked banks? Why did the GOP oppose Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Protection Agency? Why does everyone keep ignoring the passing of the Republican sponsored Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (signed by Bill Clinton in 1999) that deregulated the banking industry and caused the housing collapse? In part it also helped create more monopolies as well, as it nullified parts of the Glass–Steagall Act . The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act should be entirely repealed, but the GOP is doing just opposite by wanting to repeal the Frank-Dodd Act.

Why do the Republicans keep on insisting on having more of the same corruption in our banking industry? Who pours money into the GOP campaign elections, besides just the oil companies and other large corporations?

It's our entire banking system, and their enablers, that has caused most Americans the most harm.

Sign my petition if you agree.

Central Bank of Venezuela vs U.S. Federal Reserve(and our crooked banking system)

From New York Times: Mr. Chávez’s economic policies have been generating a boom for those most capitalist of institutions — Venezuela’s banks.

Record public spending, fueled by high oil prices, is flooding this flourishing economy with cash. Government currency controls are trapping much of that money in the country. The extra cash, in turn, is increasing consumer spending. The banks are taking advantage of that by handing out scores of loans, advertising on flashy billboards across Caracas.

And with interest rates lower than the rate of inflation, “you would be stupid not to take out a loan right now,” said Richard Francis, a director of sovereign ratings at Standard & Poor’s.

As a result, bank profits grew 33 percent last year, led by increases of more than 100 percent in credit card loans and 143 percent in automobile credit, according to Softline Consulting, a financial analysis firm here. The banking and insurance industries’ contribution to the gross domestic product rose 37 percent in 2006, the central bank said.

From Reuters: Despite Chavez's anti-capitalist rhetoric, banks have benefited from oil-driven economic expansion, with booming consumer spending spurring double-digit growth in car and home loan portfolios.

Polls last year showed strong approval ratings for banks, in part because of efforts to provide small loans to the nation's majority poor.

Monetary Control in America

Under the Constitution's Article 1, Section 8, only Congress has power "To coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof...."

Most often, however, throughout America's history, banks, not the government, controlled the nation's money. For two centuries, private banks fought for what they only partly had before success under the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. Earlier, Thomas Jefferson opposed the first Bank of the United States, Andrew Jackson the second for similar reasons:

• distrust of profiteers controlling the nation's money; and
• concern about foreign control of America's banking system.

As a result, Jefferson, in 1811, got Congress to refuse charter renewal for the first US Bank. Later, Madison signed a 20-year authorization. However, when Congress renewed it, Jackson vetoed it, calling private banking control "a hydra-headed monster," entrapping nations in debt.

It's truer than ever today with Wall Street's stranglehold on public wealth, able to create or destroy it freely. No responsible government should allow it, but Republicans (and even Democrats) endorse it, institutionalizing big money power.

Venezuelan Banking: A Public Service - The Venezuelan government already exerts heavy control over the country's banking system, forcing banks to direct about 40 percent of all loans to agriculture, housing, tourism, and micro-finance. A "public service", not just another corporate entity to enrich a very few.

America is a "Spectator Democracy"

From the Huff Po - What Happened to America? Framed approvingly by Walter Lippmann in the early 20th century, "spectator democracy" is the idea that the U.S. public is a "bewildered herd" that needs to be benevolently directed, manipulated and controlled by elites with the tools of propaganda and disinformation. As they consume content about politics, people gain the (false) impression that they're actively participating in democracy -- that they're empowered, not bludgeoned, by the media.

What Chomsky adds is that spectator democracy is now on steroids not because of technology, or because the media industry has figured out how to make a tidy profit from political spectacle. It's because more than ever before, the functioning of the American economy requires distracting the herd from the immensity of corporate power.

Fox News doesn't rile the Republican base because Karl Rove tells Roger Ailes what to do. It does it because the investment banks and the war industry and Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers and the rest of the oligarchs and plutocrats running the show need to divert the public's attention away from their economic power, their ownership of the political system, their plunder of public resources.

"How did this happen to America?" is the wrong question. After decades of corporate triumphalism, which has concentrated wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, and after generations of government being so demonized and compromised that it is no longer capable of checking that power, the better question may be: "How could it not have happened?"

And we wonder why it's the corporations and the banks that rules us; we aren't self-governed by elected officials, they were paid off. And we are SOL.

The Republicans support crooked bankers. I support nationalizing all the U.S. banks. Sign my petition if you agree.

* My book, Why I Hate Republicans will be on sale at Amazon soon. And the sequel, GOP EXPOSED, might be released early next year.

A Republican Bedtime Story Once upon a time the Republicans said that if we eliminate ALL capital gains taxes for the crooked bankers; eliminate ALL corporate taxes for the greedy CEOs; totally end Social Security and Medicare for our elderly citizens; and stop giving food stamps to poor people, America will once again be great, everyone will have a great paying job earning a "living wage", and the American people will live happily ever after. The End.