Forum Post: My Fellow American Citizens,
Posted 11 years ago on May 2, 2012, 9:20 a.m. EST by SingleVoice
(158)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
For any revolution to work, solutions are as important as protests. Protests are great for drawing attention to the problem, but then it’s time to draw attention to solutions. We have many problems so we need to start with the core one and then move on to the others.
The discrepancy of wealth is mostly due to the policies put in place by people of power wanting more power, and not wanting to give up any of that power. The object of our protests should be the people making the decisions and policies that got us here. The real issues are not being addressed by the people that are in power.
History gives us plenty of lessons in this regard. The events leading up to the crisis of 2008 are very similar to the events leading up to the crash of 1929 - record stock prices, record land and real estate prices, record debt from extensive credit. That bubble burst too.
After the crash of the stock market in 1929, congress put into place a law to separate a depositor bank from an investment bank. The 1933 Banking Act (Glass-Steagall) established the FDIC to insure depositor’s money in banks but also limited depositor banks from gambling with depositor’s money in securities on Wall Street. This kept investment banks and depositor banks as separate entities. The Banking Act also regulated speculation. We never had a major financial crash since then until...
In 1999, the Congress repealed the 1933 Banking Act (Glass-Steagall) and it was signed by President Clinton, permitting Wall Street investment banking firms to gamble with depositor’s money held in affiliated commercial banks. This is the start of "too big to fail" and what led up to the financial crisis.
The other important thing to note is that leading up to this repeal, money from Wall Street was pouring into campaigns to elect and re-elect politicians who would go along with this repeal. Also, politicians who had been in power for decades made money from inside trading and pushed to repeal this important law.
Why has the congress NOT put Glass-Steagall back on the books and demanded the separation of investment banking and depositor banking. Because they won’t give up the power they have and the money they put in their own pockets.
Congress and Wall Street have all the power. It is the corruption in Washington pushed by the money of Wall Street that is the problem and one way to correct this particular problem is to get congress to re-instate the Glass-Steagle Banking Act and WE need to replace every congressman/woman, Republican, Democrat and Independent that has been there more than 5 years because they are the ones that got us here. Why do we have lifetime politicians in office for 40 years or more that make policies to benefit themselves and hurt the rest of us. We must get rid of the corruption in Washington that feeds on the power of Wall Street money.
Let’s start there and then move on through the list of things that need to change.
– One American Voice
That's why I use cash for as many things as possible. The banks would all fail if we would just take our money out of them. Fractional Reserve Banking means that they actually have to have a certain percentage of the bank's 'assets' on-hand, in cash or coin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_fractional_reserve_banking
"Other criticisms relate to the potential fragility of bank liquidity in a fractional reserve banking environment, the financial risk of bank runs that depositors bear when depositing money with banks, and the impact that demand deposits have on the stock of money, and on inflation (that is, the implicit expansion of the money supply and its associated impact on prices and the exchange rate)."
I have a drawer full of cash. I do a lot of things that involve the banking system, like direct deposits of my paycheck and automatic draws to pay my mortgage. I do these things out of convenience and necessity. Any other transactions I have to do, I use cash for.
I also hold almost no money in the bank at any time. When I actually sat down about a year ago and went through my entire lifetime banking history, (meticulous records, yay-uh!), I discovered that it has cost me well over $10,000 so far in my life (age 32), in bank charges and fees and just general screwy bank nonsense. I use a good local bank for my necessary digital transactions, but even that bank is only holding about $2000 of mine at any point in time.
If we all used cash and kept as much money out of banks as possible, this crisis would literally not be possible. In order to commit billions of dollars of fraud, you have to have millions of dollars of cash on-hand. Actual printed green money is the blood that drives the beast. Take as much cash out as you can, and watch the beast die the death of a thousand cuts.
You make some good points, however, the FDIC was established after the crash of 1929 so if there were a run on the bank, your money was insured and no depositors would lose it. I also have pulled my money out of the large bank and put it in a local credit union at a high interest rate so that at least it's doing something. I too only use cash and don't own a credit card. We DO need the small local banks and credit unions so that people can take out loans for themselves or their businesses. We just need to gather as a people and make our legislators reinstate the Banking Act (Glass-Steagle) so that no institution can gamble with our money again. You also are right that we need to close down these large (too big to fail banks) and support our small local credit unions.
Agreed.