So much for democracy…

There isn’t even democracy among bankers these days. Community and regional banks are being shuttered around the country by the FDIC to the tune of 218 since 2007. Any bank that levered more than its fair share of capital, suffered losses due to bad subprime, and generally managed their money poorly dies a quick painful death as it is swallowed up by the government “safe banking” machine.

Any bank that is except for the Supersized Big Bailout Six…

Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs - these banks live in a different universe than mere mortals. Why? Because of the buzz phrase you have heard a lot of lately. They are simply “too-big-to-fail.”

When a bank is insolvent, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) created by the Banking Act of 1933 not only has the right, but the legal duty to take over the bank, divide its assets, investigate its books, and make sure it is open for depositors on the next business day.

But the Big Six operate under a different financial system than the rest of America. Neither you nor I are able to put our debts “off balance sheet.” We are not able to borrow from the government unlimited amounts of mulah at zero percent interest. We are not able to keep our jobs after destroying our firms. We are not able to pay ourselves bonuses, buy Leer jets, take spa vacations, and golf on Trump’s course on government dollars.

Only the Big Six are “legally” allowed to get away with the economic murder of 10 million unemployed and desperate citizens and 8 million more newly homeless American families. Only the Big Six are able to walk away scot free from the greatest bank robbery in the course of human history.

Frustrated? Yup, me too. As Congress deliberates financial reform, their goal should be to create one set of laws for all 300 million Americans.

Currently, “ordinary” America, the too-small-to-save crowd, lives under a democratic capitalist system where economic failure is not met with pots and pots of government guarantees and cash. The Supersized Big Bailout Six Banks have created an elite super class that is bound by different standards – a world of no laws, a veritable economic anarchy reminiscent of Old World Kings. Theirs is a government sanctioned free-for-all-style monopoly on the nation’s wealth – a system that MIT economist Simon Johnson calls an “oligarchy.”

The Big Six are capitalist when it comes to profits and socialist when it comes to losses. Wow! What a world it would be for any of us if we could have some poor schmuck like you take over my debts for me. I can just keep the good stuff. Any takers?

Givers and Takers

Apparently, yes there are a lot of takers. According to the 2000 census, there are 300 million of them in the United States alone. That is the number of suckers on the dole for the Supersized Big Bailout Six. Not only is this one-sided undemocratic banking system legal, it has been orchestrated and executed through the systematic and calculated infiltration of the financial system over the last 25 years.

American democracy is characterized by equality throughout all economic classes, and not intended to support any privileged class of people apart from the common public.

Yet the financial deregulation of the past two decades, officially sanctioned by the monumental bailouts that began in early 2008 and continue to this day, have created a two-tiered system of economic inequality that favors the Big Six over everyone else.

So how did we become a society where all the rights and privileges are vested in the top management of the Biggest and Baddest Six American Banks?

Banks of our Fathers

The fight between citizen-centric Thomas Jefferson and banker-centric Alexander Hamilton echoed the current economic battle we continue to wage.

Jeffersonian economists warned vigorously against putting America’s financial power into the hands of a few select bankers exactly the way the government has done since 2008. As the nation’s “too-big-to-fail” banks were pulled back from the brink of economic abyss, the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury solution to the problem was to make these banks bigger.

While Washington Mutual, the largest bank failure in U.S. history, crumbled to its knees due to flagrantly irresponsible lending practices, JPMorgan Chase was allowed to acquire WaMu at a fraction of its value. The too-big-to-fail JPM had already benefited from the government “sale” of the fifth largest global investment bank Bear Stearns for a remarkable $2 a share. This sale price was accompanied by a taxpayer infusion of $30bn for JPM’s generous takeover of Bear along with the ability to leave Bear’s toxic assets in the hands of the Feds.

Bank of America with billions of subprime debts of its own happily acquired one of the great cowboy banks, toxic debt king, Merrill Lynch. With this “acquisition” they received $20bn for their trouble on top of the initial TARP $25bn. Additionally, they were pledged $118bn in toxic debt guarantees. (Translation: the U.S. government took over their defaulting assets at taxpayer expense.)

In the quest for financial stability, Bank of America was encouraged to absorb the blatantly unethical Countrywide Home Mortgage. Wells Fargo, one of the largest three banks in the nation, was urged with government billions to swallow up “Was there a loan it didn’t like?” Wachovia Bank.

The U.S. government had created three global behemoths who are substantially larger after the crisis than they were before.

Absolute Hubris

We know that humans are prone to “absolute power corrupting absolutely.” Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank (the fourth largest U.S. bank) now hold absolute power over the majority of the nation’s mortgages.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Goldman Sachs’ chief financial officer David Viniar was busy telling the industry that the “mortgage servicing businesses was critical for firms wanting to profit from the distressed mortgage market.” GS and fellow future bank holding company Morgan Stanley scooped up predatory lenders left and right only months before their own toxic debt bailouts.

These days, the Big Six are well positioned in the distressed markets, especially since they created them and enjoy government backing for their predatory efforts. They sink their tentacles into every distressed American home loan with glee. After all, they don’t have to worry about things like losing their job, income or investments. Uncle Sam, you, and I are taking the bullet for them.

All the while the Big Six pretend to be doing their “best” to modify contracts. To date only 200,000 mortgages of the millions at issue have been modified. Millions of homes continue to be foreclosed by the Big Bailout Six every day.

“Like all loans, mortgage contracts are based on a promise to repay money borrowed,” was the pearl of wisdom presented to the House Financial Service Committee by David Lowman, head of JPMorgan Chase home-lending business.

What Lowman really means to say is that if you are an ordinary human and not one of the Supersized Big Bailout Six you have to follow policies from which the banks themselves are exempt.

It seems F Scott Fitzgerald was on to something…

“If we rewrite the mortgage contract retroactively to restore equity to any mortgage borrower because the value of his or her home declined, what responsible lender will take the equity risk of financing mortgages in the future? What responsible regulator would want lenders to take that risk?”

Indeed.

Uh, excuse me, Mr. Lowman, but your concern for responsible lending and responsible regulators does seem… I mean under the circumstances, a bit of an oxymoron.

If too-big-to-fail JPMorgan Chase, fire-sale subprime trading wing Bear Stearns and the irrationally criminal Washington Mutual lenders hadn’t tanked the markets along with the rest of the Supersized Big Six, we wouldn’t be debating this. The irony of ironies is that it is precisely due to the irresponsible behavior of the Big Six and their regulators that we have the need for home-loan modification in the first place.

So much for justice and fair play. Hail to monumental hubris and hypocrisy!

Okay, calm down girl. Get a hold of yourself. This isn’t the first time in history that the perpetrators of crimes blamed the victims for those crimes. Remember Rome circa Year Zero of Our Lord? Remember the Holocaust?

The list goes on. Back to the beginning…

Economic Civil War

Eleven score and thirteen years ago “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men (and women) are created equal.”

Okay that was a good start…

Now we are engaged in a great civil war between the have and have nots, the big banks and local banks, the big “swinging dick” mortgage companies and small struggling homeowners, the politicians, lobbyists, and bankers pulling the strings versus the common interests of the taxpaying population – testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated to the ideal of democracy and equality, can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of economics. We have come to debate this in the halls of our legislature in the hope that the democracy created by and fought for by our forefathers and mothers should be true to its original vision of equality and justice for all Americans.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this now at this time as the home foreclosure and jobless rates escalate, as small businesses continue to be shuttered, as families and neighborhoods are forced to split apart in the struggle to financially survive.

It is for us, the economic survivors of the Great Recession, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which our founders devoted their lives to and have thus far so nobly advanced. It is for us, those who are left standing, to help those who have fallen and suffer at the tyranny of the Big Bailout Six. Ordinary America should not be forced to lose their family homes, jobs, and livelihoods due to the irresponsible lending and market manipulations of the Big Bailout Six. We must right this great wrong.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task of reforming our financial system that remains before us – that from this great duty we increase our devotion and highly resolve that those honored ancestors who fought for freedom from the banking elite and private interests of a small group of privileged money men shall not have fought in vain.

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom from the tyranny of the Big Bailout Six and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth and be replaced by government “of the banks, by the banks, for the banks.”

In the purity and sanctity of American Democracy, we trust and pray. May our nation rise once again to embody its promise of equality and unchain the millions of wretched souls who remain enslaved by the hubris and hypocrisy of the Big Bailout Six.

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director    editor@goodb.net

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

In the quiet beauty of Iowa farmland, a middle-aged unemployed “tea party” protestor, Randy, screamed his displeasure at the healthcare reform bill into a megaphone. He joins the ranks of radical activists mounting increasingly violent attacks on supporters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Randy and other equal-access healthcare opponents have medical insurance and they don’t want to share their good fortune.

“The most pro-choice president this nation has ever elected is forcing us to have health care. Every single person’s body in this whole country belongs to the government now,” yelled the bearded Randy to no one in particular.

Randy is angry at the passing of government supported healthcare for every American and expressed his rage on a poster depicting a Communist hammer and sickle. Since he receives health insurance through his wife’s job, unemployment insurance through the state of Iowa and federal government, financial support through the military for his eldest child, and free education for his high school age daughter, Randy’s rage at the “government takeover” is truly absurd. He is a man who claims to believe in self-reliance and individualism yet gleans all of his financial support from the United States government. Ironically, Randy “belongs to the government” already by his own free will.

Such is the hypocrisy of many health care reform opponents – those who call themselves “Christians,” “Capitalists,” and “Freedom Lovers,” yet live anti-Christian, anti-Capitalist lifestyles of subsidized incomes and self-serving politics.

How can we respect citizens who milk the nation for all its worth, yet publicly declare their objection to government support for others? Who are these self-absorbed people and what will it take for them to reflect on their own duplicity?

They won’t be the first hypocrites in America calling for “freedom” at the expense of everyone else. The very first were the nation’s Puritans who called for religious freedom and Christian values while committing genocide on a native nation of indigenous people. Early Americans justified their heinous actions by their “genetic and religious superiority,” but what it really came down to was stealing somebody else’s land.

The second notable time newly minted Americans drew their freedom at the expense of others was the tragic institution of slavery. Self-proclaimed “freedom lovers” and “devout Christians” quoted the Bible on Sundays, the Constitution on Mondays, and enslaved millions of human beings as “rightful property” through it all. They justified profiting handsomely by robbing other people of their personal freedom.

Make no mistake-health care reform in America is about equality, liberty, and money. The nation’s citizens should have equal access to decent medical care, not just the well-heeled or well-placed. The U.S. has some of the best medical care in the modern world-but only if you can afford it. In an enlightened “Christian” nation, health care is a basic human right, not a material luxury.

Since we are right on the heels of Holy Week and so many health care protestors claim to be God-loving folk, let’s bring out the big guns and quote The Good Book. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40.

The nation’s uninsured from whichever lens you view them are the “least among us.” Those with pre-existing conditions and those with limited incomes are completely left out of the system-disenfranchised from medical care that any corporate, union, military, government, elderly or well-off citizen takes for granted. What happened to equality for all Americans?

The new health care reform bill, however imperfect, aims to right that wrong and balance the scales of justice.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” wrote the Founders. How equal are we if nearly half the adult population between the ages of 25-65 does not have access to health care?

“They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Thomas Jefferson’s prose claims it is neither the President nor Congress that gives Americans equal right to health care- but our Creator. The Declaration of Independence is virtually an endorsement for national health care. Will we deny someone their right to life, because they have a pre-existing illness?

Without a federal law, yes “we” will. Insurance companies have a monopoly on the nation’s health. American citizens continue to be denied life-saving operations and treatments by profit-driven insurance executives.

Just ask Wendell Potter, the former Cigna executive who blew the whistle on the industry. Like Paul of the Road to Damascus who went from killing Christians to becoming a founder of the religion, Potter too had a life-changing epiphany.

Wendell Potter was a VP for Corporate Communications at one of the largest health insurance providers in the nation. As communications spokesman, he was the guy that put the spin on spin. A famous case emerged on Potter’s watch. A young Los Angeles girl was denied life-saving liver surgery at UCLA Medical Center. The 17 year-old died waiting as Cigna refused the treatment recommended by UCLA’s best liver specialists. Massive protests were organized at Cigna’s headquarters. Tragically, help came too little too late. Family members and supporters called Cigna’s acts “criminal” and petitioned the District Attorney to charge Cigna with manslaughter. All the while, Wendell Potter was there spinning.

Perhaps this was the case that put a crack in his armor. Yet his real transformation occurred a year later not far from his rural Virginia home at a local “health fair.” Potter was shocked to see a scene akin to a third world nation. Thousands of people were lined up in the pouring rain while hundreds more received medical treatments under a make-shift hospital tent. Until he saw for himself the direct results of profits-before-people health care, Potter was a non-believer. The experience galvanized him to testify before a Senate committee that his and other health insurance companies, “dumped the sick to satisfy investors.”

Haves and Have Nots

We have created a system of haves and have-nots. Some of those who have healthcare do not want to share the pie and continue to call for “freedom” for the “corporatocracy” that disenfranchises whole segments of the population.

Certain loudmouthed government-subsidized lawmakers, intellectually challenged talk-show hosts, and (ironically) recipients of Social Security and Medicare oppose helping fellow citizens access the same opportunities they have at our expense.

What happened in America to the Golden Rule? Have we completely lost our moral compass?

If it were not for contributions from American taxpayers aged 25 to 65, there would be no Medicare or Social Security. We are the ones supporting Grandma and Grandpa. Most of us are proud to do it even if there may not be anything left for us. What would the country be like if the younger generations took the Tea Party stance and said “No way Jose. We are not going to support ‘socialized medicine’ or ‘government pensions’ for seniors!”

Let’s face it – no private company would insure the elderly if they were not forced to do so by the U.S. government.

Fifty years ago, the battle for “medical care for the aged” echoed the current fight for health care reform.

One lawmaker wrote on the eve of the Medicare vote:

“Stories of personal hardships to older persons who have been unable to meet medical expenses, who have gone without care they needed, who have lost all the savings of a lifetime with one catastrophic illness. I don’t know how anyone could ignore these facts or fail to recognize that there is a great human need that is not being met by the wealthiest nation in the world.”

Despite this sentiment, there was tremendous opposition to “socialized medicine” for senior citizens. The same sort of protests erupted against Medicare that we now experience with health care reform. The American Medical Association along with many of the nation’s hospitals simply refused to take part in the program, even after it was made the law of the land. It took President Lyndon Johson to work out a diplomatic solution and pressure the medical community to participate.

Circa 1964:

One doctor stated his objection to Medicare: “I have never had it brought to my attention that anyone suffered from lack of medical care because they were unable to pay for it.”

An Arizona resident said: “Not only is it unconstitutional to provide compulsory medical aid, but it is also very unwise. It is just another socialist scheme to destroy our sovereignty.”

Another person commented: “The aged people do not need this system of help, and it is just another way to take the individual’s dignity away from him and make weaker people become captives to a dole system.”

In 2010, some Medicare recipients are publicly echoing the same views about universal healthcare. Equal access to care is “socialized medicine” and will undermine our democratic capitalist structure, they claim. We have heard it all before—fifty years ago for those alive then and seventy years ago for those who remember the Social Security debate.

Medicare and Social Security are obligatory contributions from employees and employers—whether you want to participate or not. And isn’t it fortunate for the nation’s eldery that we have these programs? The over 65 crowd would be in dire straits if we did not. None of us born after the bill passed could conceive of such a socially reprehensible world where we threw the ailing elderly out on the street and allowed them to wither away without medical care or monthly stipend.

Healthcare Of the People, By the People, For the People…

An elderly aunt underwent quadruple bypass surgery last year. She was cared for around the clock in a New Jersey hospital that looked more like a four star hotel than a cardiac wing. Her doctor was a celebrated heart surgeon; her nurses attentive and top notch. Upon her release, she was visited at home by physical therapists, private nurses, home healthcare aids and in their absence monitored 24 hours a day with computerized readings sent back to the nurse’s station. It was as much of a Cadillac insurance policy that money could buy. Only money did not buy it—it was Medicare. Guess what? They haven’t dropped her since—even though she clearly has a “pre-existing” condition.

Without Medicare she would surely have died. So thank you JFK & LBJ and all the lawmakers willing to fight five decades ago for what we take for granted now.

Something hopeful and refreshingly new emerged from the passing of the health care bill – a new class of Americans emerged apart from the haves and have nots – the “have toos.” Those Americans who have insurance themselves, but because of their deep belief in reciprocity and equal opportunity for all, they want you to have it too.

It comes back to the Golden Rule. We wish for others what we wish for ourselves.

Randy, if we followed your theory of abandoning our own people, especially the least among us, you and your daughters would be homeless and destitute.

Isn’t it fortunate for you and your family that the majority of Americans still believe in The Golden Rule?

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director    editor@goodb.net

©2010 – All Rights Reserved