Tag: Federal Reserve

Laura Flanders of GRITtv talks once again with Truthdig.com’s Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, author of “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street“, about Barack Obama’s economic policies and team, about the blackmailing of you and the country and the world by Wall Street, about the financial industry lately booking two thirds of all profits produced by all economic activity in the United States, and about the parasitical mindset that now passes for “success” among the ultra-wealthy and their political servants in a morally warped empire in decline…or in freefall?

“Wall Street was blackmailing us,” says Robert Scheer of the bank bailouts, “And we got nothing in return.” It’s not news to any viewers of GRITtv that Wall Street’s tentacles ran throughout our election, but now that the election is over, we turn again to the running of government. Scheer joined us in the studio recently to discuss his new book, The Great American Stickup, and we asked him to give us some thoughts for after the election as well. Most pressing of all, he asks if either bankers or politicians are capable of thinking in anyone’s long-term interests.

Remember how we were all told that by installing new regulation oversight on the banks would fix what is wrong with the economy?

Remember how the same guys who broke the financial economy and stole trillions stood before the world and declared that they now know how to fix it?

Well … one thing is for sure … The Fix Is In!

Last week I admitted that I got nuthin when the latest developments in financial reform were announced. The picture is bleak in regards to any oversite.

Today we have further developments and I have to say once again … I still … got nuthin.

This morning I read that lawmakers are on final approach for banking reform.  

Where did our 2 TRILLION dollars go, Ben Bernanke?

   Watch Senator Bernie Sanders as he spoke today for almost a half and hour in one of the greatest speeches the Senate has ever seen.

    I will be adding some quotes from this video in updates. I wanted to get this video published fast, because I think this is a matter of utmost importance.

    Are we looking at a Huge Scam?

~ Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

    The American people have a right to know where TRILLIONS of dollars of their tax payer dollars are going!

~ Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

    Why did the Fed argue that this information must be kept secret as a matter of National Security?

~ Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

     Congress required the Treasury Department to disclose who received TARP money, why is it wrong to demand the same of the Federal Reserve?

   

In the first three segments of this six part interview we’ve heard Jane D’Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talk with Paul Jay about the end of the American consumerism as the driving ‘engine’ of the global economy, and about the decades long development of the offshoring of labor and the companies that have been doing that attempting to continue profiting by selling their goods back into a US market with steadily declining disposable income – – –  finally arriving at the point where massive government bailouts of the financial sector have been used to keep the illusion of a prosperous economy afloat at the expense of the average person, but that US workers wages are too low and there is no longer the cheap credit available to keep the system going that has been enabling people to live the ‘American Dream’ through debt, and why other countries are both unlikely and unwilling to take the place of the US as that importer of last resort that is needed to keep the illusion alive.

In this fourth segment D’Arista goes further in her conversation with Jay to give us the broad outlines of a solution she proposes to help reorganize the US and global economies – “an investment fund…in which you can attract, also, not only the savings that end up in central banks and government treasuries around the world, but the private savings, the important private savings, which are pension funds, not only in the US and other developed countries, but also in emerging market countries where pension funds are growing like crazy and they have no place to put them”, an alternative in a world where “politicians in the US, but certainly not only the US, in much of the world-are so entwined with the finance sector that the politics is pretty much as parasitical as the banks”

Part 1 of this interview is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

All four parts are under the tag Jane D’Arista

So far in the first two segments of this six part interview we’ve heard Jane D’Arista, author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance: Federal Reserve Monetary Policy: 1915-1935 and research associate with the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talk with Paul Jay about the end of the American consumerism as the driving ‘engine’ of the global economy, and about the decades long development of the offshoring of labor and the companies that have been doing that attempting to continue profiting by selling their goods back into a US market with steadily declining disposable income, finally arriving at the point where massive government bailouts of the financial sector have been used to keep the illusion of a prosperous economy afloat at the expense of the average person.

In this third segment D’Arista goes further in her conversation with Jay to explain why and how the global economic system depends on the US as importer of last resort but that US workers wages are too low and there is no longer the cheap credit available to keep the system going that has been enabling people to live the ‘American Dream’ through debt, and why other countries are both unlikely and unwilling to take the place of the US as that importer of last resort that is needed to keep the illusion alive.

Part 1 of this interview is here.

Part 2 is here.