Forum Post: Hating banks is counterproductive
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 12, 2011, 2:09 a.m. EST by landofthephat
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Hating banks is counterproductive. You simply can't live without banks in a modern, sophisticated economy. Wall Street investment firms are equally essential. Capital markets and debt markets allow businesses to function smoothly. Without them, growth and progress would be much slower.
But the U.S., in particular, needs to maintain its healthy, vibrant banking system. Banking is one of the few industries the U.S. has left where we're a global leader.
Finance is one of the few sectors where Americans can still find good-paying jobs at all levels. It's also responsible for a very significant portion of U.S. GDP. If Congress were to create burdensome new rules or taxes for the industry here, then the business would just move somewhere else. It could easily do so: there's nothing about finance that requires it to have a major presence in the U.S. Congress knows better than to risk the U.S. losing its competitive edge in such an important sector.
We should take the following into our demands AND straight to the steps of the banks: that they immediately increase and reform their loan modifications, to keep many millions more Americans in their homes and out of foreclosure; and that banks disclose information about and immediately desist from fraudulent practices such robosigning of legal documents to foreclose on people.
From the LA Times, Oct 6 2011: [see http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-housing-scorecard-20111006,0,4672740.story] :
" Last month, the Treasury Department said that Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase Bank were in "substantial" need of improvement in helping troubled borrowers modify their mortgages and that those two banks would be denied financial incentives for completing modifications until their performance in the program improved.
Wells Fargo & Co. and Ocwen Loan Servicing, after previously being on the list of banks that needed "substantial" improvement, were categorized in the Treasury report as needing only "moderate" improvement, as were American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., CitiMortgage and Select Portfolio Servicing Inc.
The banks that were in need of minor improvement included GMAC Mortgage, Litton Loan Servicing and OneWest Bank, the government said."
I agree. Banking and financing are leading contributors to the US economy. Just like drug cartels are leading contributors to thireconomies. (who, by the way, also pay extremely well). But, just like a drug cartel, they destroy any organization or person who stands in their way of a profit. And, similar to the drug cartels, the financing cartels have the backing if the US military to insure theirrfits are met.
If a community would like to get together to invest in their community, then banks and stock markets are wonderful for generating capital for investment. If an individual would like to do the same and act as a private banker, I see no problem here.
The problem I do see is too much power centralized (which ourounding fathers understood and why we have three branches of government), which means their s no competion, which any capitalist will tell you leads to corruption, waste, and fraud.
It is criminal for the banks to ask tax payers to acquire their debt, then to seize the publics assets in the form of foreclosures to balance their budget, leaving us with less income, due to inflation, and no jobs. The exact opposite of what the Fed says it is trying to do.
"It could easily do so: there's nothing about finance that requires it to have a major presence in the U.S."
Isn't this true of almost all our industries? Isn't that a problem compounded by the fact that companies of all kinds can send our jobs overseas with very little issue?
You're on the right path, but you don't get it. I don't see anyone (well, not many) saying that we don't need banks. We don't need banks (or any large corporate interest) running our government. We don't need them fleecing the public, playing with our money, and we don't need anything EVER that is "to big to fail".
The reason they are getting so much hate is that it is ABSURD for an industry that almost single-handedly crashed our economy to be posting 450 billion in profits 3 years later, while the rest of the US is mired in a recession. Why is the bank making money on our money while we are not?
Should banks be allowed to borrow money from the Government at zero percent interest and then buy US bonds and collect interest on the money they have?