We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, July 2, 2012

Banker to the Bankers Knows the Numbers Are Lying

Click here to access article by Jonathan Weil from Bloomberg. 
More than four years after the financial crisis began, it’s so widely accepted that many of the world’s banks are burying losses and overstating their asset values, even the Bank for International Settlements is saying so -- in writing. (The BIS’s board includes Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank.) It fully expects taxpayers to pick up the tab should the need arise, too. 
Read this and weep.

And, if that isn't enough to make you weep, I guarantee this piece entitled "How Wall Street Scams Counties Into Bankruptcy" will. It starts off this way:
Lord knows we’ve had more than enough scandals ginned up by Wall Street over the years, and the message that banking executives proclaim after each is: “Don’t worry, we’ve learned that lesson, and it will never happen again.”
It may surprise some people that Bloomberg openly reports on so much of the dirty laundry of financial elites, but then they know full well that working people don't read Bloomberg. And, they are much more aware than most One Percenters that such practices threaten to kill the goose (capitalism) that lays their golden eggs (wealth and power). 

Okay, now that I have you weeping, this this piece entitled "Let's end this rotten culture that only rewards rogues" will have you vomiting. Apparently, banksters just can't stop cheating to feed their easy wealth addiction:
Investment banking is an organised scam masquerading as a business. It is defined by endemic conflicts of interest, systemic amoral behaviour and extreme avarice. Many of its senior figures should be serving prison sentences or disgraced ... It is a tax on wealth generation and an enemy of honest endeavour – the beast that is devouring British capitalism.
"This rotten culture" of investment bankers is not the problem. It is only one lesion, a major one, on the public body caused by the systemic cancer of capitalism that has metastasized throughout every organ and limb of society.