Regulators Reload

The current financial reform legislation “Authorizes regulators to impose restrictions on large, troubled financial companies. It creates a process for the government to liquidate failing companies at no cost to taxpayers, which is similar to the F.D.I.C. process for liquidating failed banks.”

Which is not reassuring considering the FDIC liquidated the failed California bank IndyMac by selling it to a hedge fund. A hedge fund is a group of venture capitalists who pool their money to take huge risks at taxpayers expense, while reaping gargantuan returns. And these risk takers are going to own banks and be in control of depositors money?

The billionaire bankers took sub prime lending, that is, lending to lower middle class Americans, and turned it into a multi trillion dollar betting scheme, while undermining our economy by turning debt into profit, all the while betting on the market that it would fail. According to an editorial in the Nation magazine “six banks control assets equivalent to 63 percent of GDP…”. That’s staggering and a direct result of the repeal of the Glass Steagal Act, which kept the few from controlling the many, like hedge funds owning banks.

Supposedly, our government is in the process of passing some of the most sweeping reforms since the Depression.

Wall Street is all about creating value out of nothing, which is exactly how they brought about this financial meltdown via the housing bubble. Without the restoration of the Glass Steagall Act the same thing is going to happen again and instead of sweeping reforms, they’ve swept the problem of “too big to fail” under the rug.

It’s only a matter of time before we’re threatened with financial collapse again and have to clean up the mess left behind by billionaires, whose “troubled financial institutions” create value out of some other trick bet. What are the odds we loose again? 　

They don’t care about the odds, people who created these large troubled financial institutions walk away with billions while we’re left with no jobs, no money and trillions in debt.

Thomas Jefferson was right, banks are more dangerous than standing armies. These crooks hijacked our economy, all without firing a single shot. And what is our government doing? Reloading the muskets and beefing up the corporate arsenal.

Gushing in the Gulf

The cloudlike oil plumes gushing from the oil well in the Gulf are caused by the dispersants BP first threw at the oil spill. Samantha Joye with the University of Georgia, who reported finding areas containing sub sea oil last month said “This well is leaking a mist of oil that is settling out in the deep sea.”

The first thing any crook does is hide the evidence, and that‘s what BP has done with their dispersants whose effects are still untested. After he and a team of divers confirmed the existence of these plumes, Jean Michel Cousteau, son of the late Jacques Cousteau said BP’s actions are reckless . BP is still denying these plumes; from an AP article on June 10-“…marine scientists found a 100-foot-thick layer of oil 1,300 feet below the surface about 45 miles from the well site. BP said in a written statement that while there is oil in the water, the findings so far do not support the existence of undersea plumes.”

A recent poll came out saying 69 percent of the country disapproves of the president’s handling of the BP crisis. What about the government’s handling of the Exxon Valdez’s oil spill? Exxon was first ordered to pay 2 billion but after the victims spent 20 years in court, Exxon whittled that down to 530 million. According to Cousteau who has visited Alaska and seen firsthand the devastating effects, said, you can dig down a foot and a half in the sand and still find oil.

We need to demand less dependence on oil. One look at the macabre scene from Hell of an oil soaked pelican’s dance of death, and that should convince us. But then again, maybe we’ve become so steeled of heart we can watch scenes like that and not flinch.

Tragically, the only way to stop the spills is when every last drop of oil is sucked out of the earth, by that time, we won‘t have to worry about a viable planet or any future at all.