Forum Post: Action Items - Things we can do ourselves and things we can ask our elected representatives to do

Things we can do to discourage the big banks, investment banks and insurance companies to stop their opaque, risky day to day operations that put our economy at risk of a depression are to simply NOT DO BUSINESS with them. Withdraw your money from banks, investment banks and insurance companies and move it to credit unions. Credit unions do not try to make a profit like banks do and are a better business model that fits in line with what I think the people of this movement might agree with.

Things we can ask our elected representatives to do would be to outlaw all of the creative investments and loans that have been invented in the last 12 years since the Glass-Steagal Act was repealed and replaced by the financial modernization act.

We should Outlaw Derivatives before they OD our economy.

Unregulated investments and loans that are opaque (not transparent) and that are too complex for most people to understand should simply be outlawed or regulated.

In addition to this the Too Big To Fail companies should all be broken up into smaller regional or statewide organizations along vertical lines of business like they used to be under the Glass-Steagal Act. This law was passed in 1935 and protected our economy until it was repealed in the 1990s by a Republican controlled Congress that was running the show while they had a Democratic president on the ropes of an impeachment process.

We have a small window of opportunity to break up and regulate these companies that are Too Big To Fail before they do fail. If our Congress, Treasury, SEC and FED wait too long then when these companies do fail, it will be too late and then we will be in a depression.

Breaking up these companies into smaller vertically integrated companies will be a little wasteful economically and result in redundancy but what is wrong with that. They will need to hire more people and with all the people looking for work this would be a good thing.

Vote for elected representatives that support these economic ideas and we can stabilize our economy and reduce the risk. Then encourage those same elected representatives to reform the tax laws so that we have taxes on income and consumption to balance out the revenue needed to run our governments and you will have gone a long way toward reining in the greed. Tax reform could include lowering the rates and broadening the base.

If for example the highest income tax rate matched the capital gains rate then investment bankers who pay themselves in stock and stock options would pay what you and I pay in income taxes. If the capital gains tax rate for Warren Buffett is 15% and the income tax rate for his secretary is 15%, what is wrong with that? The same could be true for corporate income taxes. In point of fact, our Congress could lower the tax rates on Capital Gains and Income tax rages for individuals and companies to 10% with no exemptions or deductions and stimulate the heck out of our economy and put so many of us back to work that it would make our heads spin. Add to that a value added tax at 10% and we would have the funds we need to stimulate our economy, reign in consumption to balance it out with production and pay down our federal debts and get back to the surplus budgets we had in the 1990s.

If we could break up the big companies in our financial markets, we could spread the risk and reduce the possibility that a failure of smaller companies could wipe out our economy and put us in another depression.