Too Big To Fail is just plain TOO BIG
Looking to get fired up before heading to the Showdown in Chicago, October 27? Here are a few reasons we’re looking forward to facing the American Bankers Association meeting in person next week.
- Highest unemployment in 26 years.
- Three million foreclosures expected this year alone
- The “Bailout bandit” bankers are fighting to block a recovery for the rest of us.
After driving their companies and the entire economy into the ground, Wall Street took bailouts that add up to $15,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. They claimed they were ‘too big to fail.’
Then they actually reduced lending that would keep people working, increased foreclosures, charged outrageous overdraft fees and – surprise, surprise – gave themselves record salaries, bonuses and perks.
We consider these to be corporate crimes, which is why JwJ coalitions across the country have been staging actions, wrapping the ‘bailout bandits’ with crime scene tape and demanding new regulations and a major jobs program.
The simple fact is that “too big to fail” is as much a political as an economic issue. Failed banks are taken over every year by the FDIC, often with little or no customer impact. Sure, picking up after CitiGroup and the other big “zombie banks” would put an extra strain on the system, but it could be done.
The reality is that these corporate criminals are too big and powerful politically. Explaining why even minor reforms have been bottled up in Congress, Senator Durbin from Illinois admitted that the banks “frankly own the place.”
They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on politics and they’re using our bailout money to become bigger and more powerful (rather than helping people and the economy through a crisis).
These ‘too big to fail’ banks are a threat to democracy as much as they are a threat to the economy. It’s time to break the banks.
We have to break their grip on Congress, break up their political and economic power, break up the corporate crime spree and break through this economic crisis with a major jobs program, new regulations (like the Consumer Financial Protection Agency), new financial institutions that put workers and communities first and a new economy that works for everyone.
Come to Chicago Oct 25-27 if you can. Please let us know you’re coming so we can keep you up to date on what’s planned.
