America's too big to fail banks are the largest criminal enterprises in the history of mankind, committing fraud on the scale that would make John Gotti blush. To recap what happened: The banks frantically made loans to people who they knew damm well could not pay them back. They got the ratings agencies to falsely declare these safe investments. They then sold these financial devices to unwitting investors all over the world. And when people started defaulting on their mortgages, they got robo-signers to forge signatures claiming that the banks still owed the paper. So the banks were in fact stealing houses after they sold the underlying mortgages. People paying off their mortgages had no idea if their payments were going to the proper holder of the mortgage. Many times they found out that they were paying the wrong people when they got sued for foreclosure themselves.
Then there was AIG and their credit default swaps. This was a fancy term for selling insurance on the banks bad loans . In fact, , the whole term "credit default swap" was to hide the fact that they were really selling insurance. You see, insurance is regulated by the government. Thanks to Bill Clinton and the Republicans (and too many Democrats) in Congress, financial derivatives are not. So party on AIG! They would sell CDS's for virtual pennies, agreeing to pay dollars if the loan went bad. Since the banks were engaging in fraud, the loans were guaranteed to go bad. AIG made a fortune selling these cheap CDO's before the bubble burst. Certain assholes at AIG got their big bonuses. Until the market tanked and they were on the hook for hundreds of BILLIONS in bad loans. This was greed and stupidity on an almost cosmic scale.
So what happened? The big banks and AIG were bailed out. The Democratic administration of Barack Obama went along with this. Were the big, crooked banks broken up? Of course not. Were they temporally taken over by the government so the books could be straightened out and the crooks purged? Of course not! Mustn't spook the marketplace! Almost nobody went to jail. Mustn't spook the market. Never mind that the victims of this epic fraud were "spooked" by the loss of their savings, homes, jobs, pensions, ect. And guess what forks? All these organizations are still around, still Too Big To Fail, still engaging in the same crap that got the world in trouble in the first place. Another crash is inevitable if something is not done. And they will get bailed out again. Because they are still Too Big To Fail.
Folks, this crap has to end. First of all, Glass Steagall must be reinstated. This was a depression era common sense law that said when you deposited your hard earned money in a bank, the bank could not invest that money in something stupid, like chinchilla farms and...credit default swaps. Glass Steagall did this by stating that commercial banks should not be allowed to invest like investment banks or insurance companies. This common sense law held us in good stead for 60 years, until the Democratic administration of Hillary's Husband got in cahoots with the Gingrich led Republicans in Congress and actually repealed it! Why? Mustn't interfere with the Great God Market. Good God. Do NOT forget that a Democratic President signed the repeal of the law that would have prevented the Great Recession. Do NOT forget that a Democratic president supported the bailouts. Do NOT forget that a Democratic president has not even tried to break up the Too Big To Fail institutions. Do NOT forget that a Democratic president has not even tried to put these crooks in jail.
My fellow progressives, we have to get control of the Democratic Party. Yes, I know the Republicans are batshit crazy. But we cannot let fear of the GOP let people like Hillary off the hook. It's because Democrats like the Clintons and Obama have basically accepted the conservative free market ideology that enables the Republicans to go crazy. Snarky Hillaryites smugly think we have no place to go, and so they take the banksters money and put in place 90 percent of the GOP economic agenda, Folks, this garbage has to stop.
So, I propose a simple litmus test for Democratic candidates. You will agree to 1) Reinstate Glass Steagall. 2) Break up the big banks 3) Prosecute banksters for their crimes. 4) Regulate and tax useless transactions that do society no good. 5) No more bailouts! In short END TOO BIG TO FAIL If you do not support this Democratic candidate, we will not support you . EVER.
Enough is Enough.
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