Fixing the Economy

One of the problems with our economy is that the financial sector has broken its trust with the people. The banksters, of whom Goldman Sachs is just one example, ignored any sense of fiduciary duty towards their customers. They knowingly steered their customers into buying fraudulent securities because they (banskters) could reap huge fees from doing so.

The Central Falls bankruptcy is, in part, traceable to the shenanigans of the banksters.* They are by no means the only local government that may end up broken by spiraling debt costs. The banksters, though, cashed out their fees and have fled.

The people running the financial sector would seem to be either wholly dishonest or unconscionably stupid. My bet is that they are thieves.

So the game is rigged.

The way to restore the financial sector is not only with bailouts and interest rate games. Trust has to be restored. And the only way to restore trust is to do what this administration and the previous one have completely failed to do: Hold the banksters accountable.

This is what drives me absolutely batshit about the Tea Party: They are ranting and raving about bailouts of the banks and "government motors", but they have nothing to say about going after the financial tricksters who pumped up the housing marked and then deflated it, making boatloads of money both ways. When there is any move in Congress to redo the laws to stop those sorts of financial shenanigans in the future, the Tea Party is in the forefront of trying to spike them.

Which is kind of like being outraged about bank robberies and then making it illegal to install better bank vaults.

It's not just the Tea Party (and the Koch Brothers), of course. Plenty of Democrats have lined up to help the banksters evade responsibility for their outrageous looking of the global economy.**

If we are going to fix this economy, we have to restore a sense that the people profiting the most from it are ethical and honest. Exhortations from the West Wing won't do it. Only holding the banksters accountable will do it and by that, I mean in criminal court.

This will also help:

And we should have gotten started over three years ago.
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* The other part is virtually every state and local government has deliberately underfunded their pension systems.
** Chuck Schumer and Carolyn McCarthy being two of them. They are to the banksters what Max Baucus is to the health insurance companies.