[Pages 238-243]
In the case
of Wall Street and the “too big-to-fail” banks, no industry and no group within
the aristocracy is more responsible for stealing the American Dream, ruining
our economy and taking over our government. Their unbridled avarice and greed reduced
the value of individual homes by tens of thousands of dollars and put millions
and millions of America homeowners “underwater” a.k.a. owing more than the home
is worth . . . not to mention putting at least 8.5+ million Americans out of
work. As a result, average Americans are left holding the bag for Wall Street
with some 13 T trillion dollars in debt and financial losses. In truth, it’s
not our debt at all because we didn’t cause it, but generations of Americans
will have to work like slaves — if they are fortunate enough to find a job — to
pay of Wall Street’s debt. What is amazing is that Americans are still passive,
still docile, still willing to take whatever is dished out . . . while Wall
Street pays itself billions of dollars in bonuses?
Wall Street
and the banks, because they own Congress and Washington, D.C. were able to blackmail U.S. taxpayers, through fears of a total
economic collapse, into a massive bailout of almost at trillion dollars. Then,
instead of showing humility or any contrition, Wall Street twisted arms in Washington to deliver a “Wall Street reform
bill” with the teeth of a baby mouse. Not only is the legislation virtually
worthless, it made the banks and the Wall Street investment houses — that were
deemed “too big to fail” previous to the Great Recession — even larger behemoth
pigs.
Now that
the American people are left holding their debt and living within their ruination
of our economy, Wall Street is back to business as usual. While all of the top
5 investment banks and smaller banks on down the list in size are responsible
for the meltdown; one more than any other is not only more responsible but
benefited more financially than any of the other banks. In a highly recommended
book, called Money and Power: How Goldman
Sachs Came to Rule the World, author William Cohen details the
worst-of-the-worst bank’s role in the meltdown and in doing so reviews the
banks long and sorted past of corruption. In the 1920s Goldman ran a Ponzi-like
scheme involving investment trusts. In the 1970s they peddled soon to be
worthless commercial paper for the soon to be bust Penn Central Railroad and
then leading up to the meltdown that caused the Great Recession — they sold
highly suspect mortgage-backed securities to clients and investors while all
the while betting against the solvency of those investments.
Nonetheless,
when Washington, D.C. needs a financial advisor or
regulator, they turn no where but to former Goldman Sachs employees and CEOs
almost exclusively. Most noteworthy, Hank Paulson within the Bush II administration
who made sure that Goldman Sachs came out of the financial meltdown as an even
larger bank — in a group of behemoth “too big to fail” financial monopolies
with no competition whatsoever. If too big to fail led to the last financial
disaster, then the next disaster to come based on bank size alone . . . should
put the final nail in our economic existence.
Goldman
Sachs paid out an average employee bonus of $430,700 in 2010.1 The
very people who are directly responsible for destroying our American economy
were paid more than 8 times the average total income of U.S. households.2
Separate to that money, Goldman employees received and additional $36 M
windfall via stock options granted during the 2008 financial collapse.3
To pour even more salt in the wound Goldman Sachs inflicted upon America, they
announced in June 2011 they are firing 1000+ American financial professionals
and moving their jobs to Singapore to skirt new Wall Street reform regulations.
While some of the radical right in Congress want to label the reforms a “jobs
killer,” 1000 fewer Goldman Sachs crooks on our shores is a blessing in
disguise. Maybe the fired employees can get a job as real estate agents in the
industry they destroyed?
Across Wall
Street as a whole, bonuses in 2010 were $20.8 B, with an average of $228,530 .
. . a record year.4 As for the slithering Wall Street CEOs,
primarily responsible for the Great Recession we’re now living within, here’s
just a sampling of their 2010 pay and stock options they received in 2010:5
Lloyd
Blankfein, CEO Goldman Sachs Group $14.6
M
Jamie
Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co. $17
M
Laurence
Fink, BlackRock CEO, $13
M*
Brian
Moynihan, Bank of America Corp. $9.1
M*
* Restricted stock only, salary not
included
The real
question is how is it that Wall Street is still standing? How is it that the
branches of these banks on nearly every corner are still in tact? How can the
CEOs of these banks even walk the streets without an army of bodyguards to keep
them alive? How dare any of them even show their face? Where are the
investigations from the Department of Justice? Where are the Wall Street CEOs
behind bars? Why are prisons and jails only for “the little people?” These are
the questions that all Americans need to be asking themselves . . . allowing
Wall Street crooks to walk the street is a crime, an affront to every
American’s sense of justice and fair play and yet, nothing to date has been
done to put any significant Wall Street executive behind bars?
Clearly
understand there are two justice systems in America and only average citizens go jail
in America for stealing. For Wall Street and
the mega-rich it’s all about utilizing their “get out of jail free cards”
a.k.a. “negotiated settlements” such as the $67.5 M deal former Countrywide CEO
Angelo Mozilo got from the SEC to stay out of jail. More recently, Bank of
America [as part of the Countrywide scam] agreed to payout $8.58 B to 22
institutional investors, but to date nothing has been done to relieve American
homeowners underwater. Why? “Institutional investors” such as BlackRock
Financial Management, Metropolitan Life and the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York who were included in the settlement, are part of our America aristocracy
and America homeowners underwater are just “chumps” a.k.a. suckers! Now, with a
settlement in place, most analysts believe that all Bank of America homeowners
who have been sitting in foreclosure limbo will now be tossed out into the
streets at a greatly accelerated pace going forward.
Violence is
never the answer, but instead of violence, Americans, the good natured lot that
we are, have just shrugged our shoulders and said ‘oh well, we got screwed by
the banks and there is nothing we can do but pay off their debt.’ We even still
carry their credit and debit cards in our wallets and we still have our money
in their banks? The real question is, ‘are we insane?’ Are we the most stupid
people to every walk the Earth? Do Americans have any backbone whatsoever? If
we do, it’s time to show it by enacting our collective vengeance upon the top 5
banks! Not next month or next year, but today this week, if you have even one
single penny in any of the following banks, then be one of the proud Americans
that fires the first shot over the bow of the mega-rich aristocracy by closing
ALL your accounts and refinancing ALL your loans away from the following banks
and Wall Street firms:
- Bank of America
- Citigroup
- Goldman Sachs Group
- J. P. Morgan Chase and Company
- Wells Fargo & Company (Wachovia)
It’s
simple and easy: 1) open a new account at a small local bank or credit union
tomorrow 2) give a voided check to your payroll department to start direct
deposit and 3) allow all checks to clear from the big bank and then close the
account . . . with a really big smile on your face! The time is long past due
to show these behemoth greedy pigs that we Americans do have a long memory, we
do feel the pain delivered via their greed, we’ll never forget what they did
and from this day forward we will enact our own form of vengeance. They’ve
bought off our government, hit us with nickel and dime fees just to access our
money, financed mergers that destroyed good American companies, engaged in
predatory lending and pursued greed beyond what any human conscience should
allow . . . all contributing to destroy our economy and put millions of
Americans out of work. Any American that maintains business with the top five
and other large banks (provided via the breakout resource below) is complicit
100% in their greed. You are just as responsible and just as accountable as the
banks in which your deposits and loans now reside.
Breakout
Resource
Top Banks
Listing via the Federal Reserve
Please
don’t stop with the top 5 banks in pulling your deposits and loans, all the
large banks are the greedy vipers responsible for the Great Recession within
which we now suffer. Move every single penny you have to small local banks and
credit unions tomorrow! It’s a small request in the grand scheme of things and
it can be done in less than an hour. Unfortunately, it must be done in person
on most occasions, simply because the banking industry has stacked the deck
with red tape, potential fees and a prickly mine field to navigate when closing
your account. The Freedom and Mobility in Consumer Banking Act that is
currently stalled in Congress would remove many of these obstacles, but
nonetheless, don’t allow a few minor obstacles to stop you from closing your
account today. Use your small voice via e-mail, snail mail, Facebook and every
other social networking vehicle to make this a national call to action for
every single America alive . . . to remove
every single dime they have in the big banks.
Don’t
think for even a moment that our collective action, involving millions of
Americans, in this regard will not have a massive impact upon their power. Vengeance
feels good, but as stated repeatedly, this book is all about the future. To
reward the banks that destroyed our economy with your money is just sick! It’s
as if you’re asking to be raped again. Go to the breakout resource above and
look at the deposit dollars and estimate what percentage comes from people just
like you. It’s HUGE!!!!! Billions and billions of dollars sitting there to be
yanked from their greedy clutches.
Once
this effort is up and running, don’t buy their spin and whining . . . make them squeal like the pigs that
they are. Their spin will be the same BS they used to blackmail the American
taxpayers into bailing them out . . . they will claim that such a run on the
banks will destroy the economy, lessen America’s power as “the financial hub of
the world” . . . bla, bla, bla. They will whine, cry and plead with the American
people to once again come to their aid. They’ll spend billions on commercials
and public relations campaigns along with pleading to their cronies in Congress
to pass some bill to come to their aid. Let them starve in the streets, like
the American families they have foreclosed upon, let them feel hunger and
unemployment!
Who
at the banks have heard the pleas of American families thrown out into the
streets to starve as their homes were foreclosed upon? Who at the banks have
heard the pleas of American small business owners as they’ve begged for loans
to expand their businesses or just to survive a down economy? No one at the big
banks heard the pleas from America as they used their new
found weight and power after the bailout to simply buy up all the faltering
small banks ravaged from their greed. The swine of Wall Street have simply used
a down economy, of their own creation, to tighten the screws upon the American
people even more.
Rest
assured, once “we the people” have taken our vengeance along with our billions
of dollars in deposits, life will go on. There will be some empty bank buildings
on some corners as money shifts to smaller local banks and credit unions, but
they’ll be bought up and reopened by smaller banks. The mega loans currently
being made by the mega-banks will simply be made in conjunction by a couple of
the smaller banks. Don’t buy the spin that ‘our entire financial system will
collapse,” because it’s total crap! The mega-rich used their spin game once and
we bought into it like suckers, but we’re not gong to be suckered twice by the
same game. It’s time for America to finally wise up! The
idea that what is good for Wall Street is good for America and average citizens is
total complete BS! That thinking and those days are over . . . America has wised up!
Don’t
put if off for even another day, pull all your deposits and refinance all your
loans while interest rates are at rock bottom and get it done this week! Then
encourage everyone you know to do the same and do it now! The goal is to launch
a run on the big banks like nothing ever before witnessed in American history. Once
we get this effort moving in earnest, we can put a stop to the billion dollar
bonuses in a month. We can downsize the big bank CEO pay in a heartbeat, along
with their palatial estates. We can’t starve them as they have done the
American people, but we can sure punch them in the stomach! More than anything,
we can remove the millions of dollars in bribery money they are now using to
buy Washington, D.C. to pay off our
political class.
Just
as important, if not far more, is an all out effort by every American voter to
remove every single member of Congress and state legislature that has ever
taken one single dime of campaign money from Wall Street. If you think it’s not
your party of choice, or not your representative taking the bribes, then think
again America! Review the listings
below via the breakout resource of the top 20 senators and members of the House
and if there is a party difference, it is miniscule! No. 7 on the House bribery
list taking money from Wall Street is Chair of the Party B National Committee,
Debbie Wasserman Schultz. So what else do you need to know about Party B and
Wall Street bribery?
While
a massive and complete overhaul of campaign finance in America will take time and more
than likely will require the American people taking over Washington, D.C. and shutting it down
completely to achieve it . . . rooting out all money from Wall Street can be
done in one or two election cycles. A single dime of campaign money from Wall
Street must become the ultimate kiss of death for all politicians going
forward, regardless of political party. Living within the Great Recession,
delivered by Wall Street greed, as far into the future as anyone can foresee
and allowing even more bribery money to go into the pockets of our corrupt
political class . . . is like trying to get your only daughter a date with
Tiger Woods.
Breakout Resource(s)
Top 20 Senators Receiving Wall Street Bribes
Top 20
Members of the House
Receiving Wall Street Bribes
Commercial Bank
Pay-to-Play Contributions to Congress
It is far
more important, than any act of mere revenge, that we remove the money big
banks utilize to bribe our Congress. If you don’t get anything else from this
book understand clearly that Wall Street and the big banks OWN our Congress and
government just like you own your dog. Now, when Wall Street calls, your members
of Congress wag their tails and roll over on their back while asking for their
belly to be rubbed. The only evidence needed to prove that reality is the
bailout that occurred. No more evidence needs to provided or added. Your
deposits and loans are funding bribery and calling it by the name of “campaign
finance” is just lying to your self. It is bribery and much of it is being done
with your money. End the lie and stop the bribery today by pulling every dime
of your loans and deposits from the big banks and encourage every single America to do the same. Vengeance can be
ours if we act together . . . make these pigs pay for their greed!!!
Breakout Resource(s):
WallStreetWatch.org
Breaking Up the Banks
Make Wall Street Pay
Freedom and Mobility in Banking Act
