FACEBOOK
TWITTER
DR. JOHN HUMINS: WALL STREET TURNS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT
WALL STREET TURNS AGAINST THE PRESIDENT
By John Humins for Veterans Today
Former Wall Street supporters of Barack Obama have publicly voiced their alienation with President Obama’s financial reform policies. They have rejoined the corporate mainstream in condemning the president’s actions to restore ethics, regulatory oversight and attention to the general welfare in the American economic order.
They have clearly expressed their beliefs that their financial interests must be served. Government, they assert, should understand that a “free” market is the best policy to generate economic growth and wealth.
The current economic crisis belies their statements. It was the abuses of Wall Street and the unfettered financial markets that drove the economy into the ditch. A market that is completely “free” from regulation is a market ripe for economic anarchy. That is a scene where there are no rules, only profits and fat financial rewards for the insiders. It was, and is, a scene where greed and avarice prevail. And it benefits relatively few, while victimizing millions.
Too many business and financial leaders think they are operating in a vacuum. For thirty years, the Federal government has increasingly deregulated the American economy and has largely catered to corporate interests. This deregulation surge has become the accepted norm for these leaders. They like the freedom. They love that they are free to pursue their own interests without any oversight and responsibility. Transparency, as advocated by the president, is an anathema to those who wish to manipulate the market place.
The unregulated economic order has served itself very well. But it has not served the interests of the American people. Jobs have been outsourced. Wages have stagnated. Pensions and health benefits have declined or disappeared in private industry. Predatory and fraudulent mortgages became ticking time-bombs. Foreclosures reached epidemic levels and some neighborhoods faced ruination. Small banks have failed at alarming rates. And currently, millions of workers are unemployed or underemployed. These economic maladies are result of the excesses of a “free” marketplace. This “free” marketplace, as it did in 1929, has lead to an economic meltdown.
The “fat cats” are complaining that Obama’s policies to protect consumers, credit card holders, and mortgage seekers are too restrictive. Again, they feel victimized. They are not victims! They are the perpetrators of the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression. Instead of crying like spoiled children, they should be publicly shouting ‘mea culpa.’ And some should be prosecuted for criminal activities. For instance, how does Goldman Sachs justify ‘shorting’ the very financial products they sold as sound investments. Can you hear the echoes of an infamous Wall Street directive: “Put some lipstick on that pig… and sell it!”
Regardless of the many transgressions and current economic crisis, these’ fat cats’ cry foul. They claim that they are victims. A “bailout’ of nearly $900B distributed to the “too big to fail” banks, insurance, mortgage and automobile corporations, without any concessions, tells another story. They were ‘bailed-out’ by the American people. Now they feel financially invulnerable again. They have flourished in a fantasy world, now they must be brought back to reality.
For too long, Wall Street and many corporations have denied that they operate in a social context. To do so would mean they that have responsibilities to society and the American people. Rather, they insist that they are only responsible to their stockholders. They think only in the short term to maximize profits and the pay packages of the top executives. As a result, the economic order serves itself and the economic elite, while it ignores its responsibilities to the American people. Given the greedy and mean-spirited tendencies of too many corporations and financial institutions, no one should be shocked to learn that the top two per cent of Americans have over 50 per cent of this nation’s wealth. And it should come as no surprise that the pinnacling of wealth to the aristocratic few has accelerated during the recent decades of deregulation.
These ‘fat cats’ are so arrogant and removed from any sense of social responsibility that they now are rebelling against President Obama. Many of them have supported and gave generous political contributions to his campaign. They, of course, expected that their interests would be served. Only a president, who is in bed with these self-serving privateers, would oblige them and ignore his responsibility to the general welfare of the American people.
The truly sad and dangerous side to this financial-sector rebellion is that the actions and words of these rebels resemble economic extortion. ‘We’ll no longer support a president, who doesn’t serve our interests’, is a sad commentary. It puts their unwillingness to provide loans, create jobs and re-energize the American economy into a category of greedy, self-centered anti-Americanism.
John Humins, PhD
US Army, 1966-68
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=47878
Posted by Dr. John H. Humins on Sep 5 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
COMMENTS
To post, we ask that you login using Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail in the box below.Don't have a social network account? Register and Login direct with VT and post.
Before you post, read our Comment Policy - Feedback
Whilst I would argue that the writer ascribes too much to Obama’s intents vis-a-vis “financial reform” (he was and remains firmly a pet of Big Money Interests), his outcry over the aversion of Corporatists to social responsibility is right on the money (no pun intended).
The only real solution, however, is matter purely of systemic change, not regulatory “reform”.
Restoration of Congressional-only supplied, non-interest-bearing, hard-back currency would end overnight the economic strangle hold and monopolistic economic tyranny of the Wall Street Mafia and the Fed and send them packing (those who aren’t rounded up and imprisoned for life as they should be).
Then, turning the spotlight on Big Corporate interests, the solution to end their game would be to mandate by law that they either shutdown their overseas operations and bring them all back to these shores (from whence they gained their growth in the first place) thus restoring ALL jobs previously held by Americans, or else face:
1. immediate cessation of their charter,
2. the arrest of their entire boards and executive management,
3. the appropriation of all their holdings (physical and financial) and the break-up of their operations into smaller units to be given over to the control of the employees (as all businesses ultimately should be from the start so as to give a share of the profit to all those who work to make the company successful).
Further the US should withdraw from the WTO (and dismantle it) and institute tariffs and excise on all foreign goods as per the model intended by our founders. This would ensure both consistent revenue to the Federal Government (albeit one with significantly scaled down responsibilities) and a level playing field for US production against products from slave labor countries. That this is also the ONLY Constitutionally ordained source of government revenue is no small matter.
IF these starting points were followed you would see an increase in economic stability and individual prosperity not seen in over over 150 years return to this country.
However the big cahunas – Rockefellers, Rothschilds, et al – would have to removed from the picture completely (to the last) in order to avoid the mistakes made by Andy Jackson in letting them go the first time. Such parasites will always find a way to subvert things down the road if allowed to slink back into the shadows.
I like the way you talk. You’re also absolutely right about going after the big kahunas so as to avoid a future recurrence of their power and control.
I have a problem with this article.
Obama works for the Banksters and Wall Street!
He is owned by George Soros, Goldmann Sachs, and ultimately the City of London.
Those are his bosses and he will never do anything that slightly looks like real reform:
Real Reform would have looked like this:
1- Take back the bailout money and let the banks that couldn’t survive go into bankrupcy.
2- Ban derivatives trading which is 1-3 quadrillion of which 60%-70% is considered to be toxic paper.
3- Restore the Glass-Stegall Act to separate commercial banks from the investments banks. Obama fought tooth an nail to stop that from being passes by Congress.
4- Create a Pecora commission to put the Wall Street perps on trial for their crimes.
5- Fire Larry Summers and Little Timmy Geithner. ( but he can’t because he is letting the foxes guard the henhouse so poeple don’t find out all the chickens are dead )
6- Bring in people like Elizabeth Warren and William Black to expose and cleanup corrupt accounting practices.
7- Audit the corrupt Federal Reserve which is bankrupt, and then nationalize it.
Now these 7 points are what constitutes REAL reform, and the Obama Administration has blocked all of them at every turn. Without doing this his other proposals for Wall are basically worthless.
This is Obamas dog and pony show for the masses to make it look like he is “fighting Wall Street”, when in reality he is doing nothing significant.
Great interview with William Black by Bill Moyers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz1b__MdtHY
Just watched it, Black made it really easy to understand and am now trying to work out why this type of investigative journalism was not on Fox News
)
Ron Paul 2012, you took the words right out of my mouth….
When will people realize they are being played by the elites that control both sides? When will the people pull back the curtain and understand there is a handful of families that run the world, engineer wars and create the financial collapses that create more power for them.
http://www.thenewalexandrialibrary.com/leftright.html
is a good start…
Ron: I agree with most of your seven points. It is, however, too late to retrieve the bail-out money. And if you could, you would incur a financial collapse that would have dire consequences for our economy and the American people.
But it is time to break up the “too big to fail” banks and corporations. They serve themselves and not the American people. John Humins
Well the banks aren’t lending it so what’s the difference?
If you think it would cause “dire consequences” wait until hyperinflation/deflation kicks in. The banks are BANKRUPT and there is no way out, all Obama is doing is kicking the can down the road.
Ron: That the banks are not lending is a major point of my essay. Is their inaction a purely economic decision or is it a political strategy?
On Long Island, where I live, local banks are making loans and the local economy, while still bad, is better than most of the country. Small local banks are lending because it what they do for their own profit and the betterment of their communities. The large banks are the laggards.
Yes, it is a fact that banks are failing. The vast majority of them are small, local banks. The large, “too big to fail” banks are sitting on large monetary reserves. Where is their sense of loyalty and obligation to provide loans after receiving billions indirectly from the American people. It is our money that helped stabilize the financial markets and their economic conditions, yet they sit on their funds. Is this an economic decision or a political one. Both, probably.
Lastly, we both know that hyperinflation/deflation are not mutually inclusive. Rather, they are opposite economic maladies. Economists are seemingly divided about which condition is on the horizon. Deflation seems to be the bigger worry. We are already see declining house values and this downward spiral will devastate the middle class and their retirement nest eggs. And it will have an impact beyond housing.
President Obama is caught between a rock and a hard place. While I voted for him, I am also somewhat disappointed in him. Then again, I keep reminding myself, that he inherited a mess and that the so-called loyal opposition has been anything but loyal to making the American economy stronger and being more attuned to the suffering of millions of ordinary Americans. I feel their pain and I hope that you feel the same.
Thanks for your comments and criticisms, John
PS: One of my sons is a big fan of yours.
Here’s a revelation for Israel:
You are the “Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abomination of the earth.” God (the Father) gave you a bill of divorcement. You sit upon the dragon (Satan) from whom you derive your powers. You are the tyrannical beast that preys upon its neighbors and persecutes the Church of God. You are “drunk with the blood of the saints.” It is you and all who follow you that are “full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.”
“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”
“Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.”
“For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in the ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas the great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for IN ONE HOUR IS SHE MADE DESOLATE.”
All you – Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Soros, et al – will go down to perdition with Satan. You have the power now to do whatever you will, but the day is coming when your power will be taken away, and you will face righteous judgment!
You can’t say you weren’t warned.
The description of Wailing Wall St Dons modus operandi fits perfectly. What they want is FREE HANDS to rob the people blind, using scams, they call ‘financial engineering’, what they are telling the Gov. is: “Don’t protect the gentile game, it’s our birth right to hunt it down”. By financing the Obama campaign, they consider, he has to deliver whatever they want. Taking away the FED from the ZionTalmudicMafia, i.e. the privilege of printing fiat money, unsupported by tangible assets, is the 1st step to do.