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"Too Big To Fail Is A License For Recklessness" America's Banking System Is A "Fragile House Of Cards"
Submitted by Lynn Parramore via The Institute for New Economic Thinking,
Anat Admati teaches finance and economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is co-author of The Bankers' New Clothes, a classic account of the problem of Too Big to Fail banks. On May 6th, at the Finance and Society Conference sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, she will join Brooksley Born, former chair of Chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, to discuss how effective financial regulation can make the system work better for society. Seven years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Admati warns that we are not doing nearly enough to confront a bloated, inefficient, and dangerous financial system. The system can't fix itself. Here's what you need to know.
Lynn Parramore: How would you describe the problem of Too Big to Fail banks. Whey does it matter to an ordinary person?
Anat Admati: Too Big to Fail is a license for recklessness. These institutions defy notions of fairness, accountability, and responsibility. They are the largest, most complex, and most indebted corporations in the entire economy.
We all have to be really alarmed by the fact that not only do we still have such institutions, but many of them are ever-larger and more complex and at least as dangerous, if not more so, than they were before the financial crisis.
They are too big to manage and control. They take enormous risks that endanger everybody. They benefit from the upside and expose the rest of us to the downside of their decisions. These banks are too powerful politically as well.
As they seek profits, they can make wasteful and inefficient loans that harm ordinary people, and at the same time they might refuse to make certain business loans that can help the economy. They can even break the laws and regulations without the people responsible being held accountable. Effectively we're hostages because their failure would be so harmful. They're likely to be bailed out if their risks don't turn out well.
Ordinary people continue to suffer from a recession that was greatly exacerbated or even caused by recklessness in the financial system and failed regulation. But the largest institutions, especially their leaders — even in the failed ones — have suffered the least. They're thriving again and arguably benefitting the most from efforts to stimulate the economy.
So there's something wrong with this picture. And there's also increasing recognition that bloated banks and a bloated financial system – these huge institutions—are a drag on the economy.
LP: Have we made any progress in dealing with the problem?
AA: The progress has been totally unfocused and insufficient. Dodd-Frank claims to have solved the problem and it gives plenty of tools to regulators to do what needs to be done (many of these tools they actually already had before). But this law is really complex and the implementation of it is very messy. The lobbying by the financial industry is a large part of the reason that the law has been implemented so poorly and inefficiently with so much difficulty. We are failing to take simple steps and at the same time undertaking extremely costly steps with doubtful benefits.
So we've had far from enough progress. We are told things are better but they are nowhere near what we should expect and demand. Much more can be done right now.
LP: Banks, compared to other businesses, finance an enormous portion of their assets with borrowed money, or debt – as much as 95 percent. Yet bankers often claim that this is perfectly fine, and if we make them depend less on debt they will be forced to lend less. What is your view? Would asking banks to rely more on unborrowed money, or equity, somehow hurt the economy?
AA: Sometimes when I don't have time to unpack everything I use a quote from a book called Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins by Jeff Connaughton. He relates something Paul Volcker once said to Senator Ted Kaufman: "You know, just about whatever anyone proposes, no matter what it is, the banks will come out and claim that it will restrict credit and harm the economy…It's all bullshit."
Here's one obvious reason such claims are, in Volcker's vocabulary, bullshit: Lending suffered most when banks didn't have enough equity to absorb their losses in the crisis — and then we had to bail them out. The loss they suffered on the subprime fiasco was relatively small by comparison to losses to investors when the Internet bubble burst, but there was so much debt throughout the system, and indeed in the housing markets, and so much interconnection that the entire financial system almost collapsed. That's when lending suffered. So lending and growth suffers when the banks have too little equity, not too much.
Now, banks naturally have some debt, like deposits. But they don't feel indebted even when they rely on 95 percent debt to finance their assets. No other healthy company lives like that, and nobody, even banks, needs to live like that — that's the key. Normally, the market would not allow this to go on; those who are as heavily indebted feel the burden in many ways. The terms of the debt become too burdensome for corporations, and reflect the inefficient investment decisions made by heavily indebted companies. But banks have much nicer creditors, like depositors, and with many explicit and implicit guarantees, banks don't face trouble or harsh terms. They only have to convince the regulators to let them get away with it. And they do.
So the abnormality of this incredible indebtedness is that they get away with it. There's nothing good about it for society. If they had more equity then they could do everything that they do better —more consistently, more reliably, in a less distorted fashion.
Today's credit market is distorted. A key reason is that bankers love the high risk and chase returns. They are less fond of some of the lending where they are needed the most — like business lending, for example. Instead, most people get many credit cards in the mail and too many people live on expensive revolving credit. Effectively, the poor may end up subsidizing the credit card of the person who pays on time and has zero interest (and we all end up paying the enormous fees merchants are charged). So we can have too much or too little lending and live through inefficient booms and busts. Part of the reason for that is that banks are continually living on the edge in a way that nobody else in the economy would, and regulations meant to correct it are insufficient and flawed in their design.
LP: Banking has been a very profitable business. Is it profitable because the risks are born by the taxpayer? Do you think the bank bonus system is part of the problem?
AA: Yes, banking is partly profitable because of subsidies from taxpayers. There are probably other reasons, and not all of them good ones, in terms of the way competition works and other things. The bonus system encourages recklessness, and recklessness increases the value of the subsidies from taxpayers. Bankers are effectively paid to gamble.
It is profitable for the banks to become big even when this is inefficient, because they can do so with subsidized borrowing on easy terms. Guarantees, explicit and implicit, are a form of free or subsidized insurance. We don't control whether what banks do with the cheap funding benefits the economy or just bankers and some of their investors. We must reduce these large subsidies that end up rewarding recklessness and harming us. (See Admati's July 2014 testimony before Congress on bank subsidies).
LP: We often hear about financial innovations that helped bring the global economy to its knees in 2008. Back in December, Congress rolled back a key taxpayer protection concerning derivatives, which Robert Lenzner of Forbes Magazine called a "Christmas present for the banks." What do Americans need to know about derivatives? How do they affect the Too Big to Fail problem?
AA. The Christmas present was just one more small thing in a much bigger problem. The largest financial firms in America can hide an enormous amount of risk in derivatives. That's very dangerous because it makes banks more interconnected, since much of the derivatives trading happens within the financail system. It creates a house of cards — a very fragile system.
We also have bankruptcy laws in this country that perversely give unusual priority to derivatives contracts and other reckless practices.
Derivatives exacerbate Too Big to Fail dramatically because there's so much opacity in the system. Policy-makers get scared into bailing our or guaranteeing a lot of their commitments made in those markets because they won't quite know the consequences of letting them fail. It's very intimately related to Too Big to Fail. It's as if they hold a gun to your head. You don't konw whether they have bullets so you may get scared into paying the ransom.
LP: Is breaking up the banks is a solution?
AA: People say those words but what does it mean? How would you do it? That's the big problem. Banks are multiple times bigger than most of the corporations you think of as big. I once made a mistake rushing through a HuffPost piece in 2010 saying that Jamie Dimon wants to be as big as Walmart. Well, at the time, JP Morgan was already 10 times bigger than Walmart by assets! When it comes to the financial sector, big is really big. People don't even appreciate how big we're talking about. Nobody else gets to be as big, and in fact, In other parts of the economy, companies that get so big often break up on their own. But that doesn't happen in banking partly because of the perverse subsidies taxpayers provide.
The most sensible approach is to force banks and other financial institutions to have more equity, which is actually going to expose their inefficiencies and bring more investor pressure for a break-up to happen naturally without us doing it actively. Regulators can also put significantly more pressure on banks to simplify their structure and divest unnecessary lines of businesses such as commodities (energy, aluminum, etc.). The size appears unmanageable and makes regulation difficult.
LP: What would make banking regulation more effective?
AA: First of all there could be simpler regulation in some places and some cost-ineffective things could be used a bit less. Right now, we know too little about the risk and we have too little margin for error. We must reduce the opacity and increase the safety margins dramatically. Regulators make it complicated because we are unnecessarily living at the edge of a cliff all the time. We live so dangerously! There's no need for that. We are told that we have to live like that, but it's that's completely false. The system has to be made a lot more resilient. Then we can worry less and sleep better.
In addition to making things simpler, it's very important that we are able to see more of the risk and then to enforce much stronger and simpler rules. And, of course, regulators need to be watching where the risks are going. They should not believe that just because the risks are off the accounting balance sheets that they are gone. That was a trick to get around regulations and get around accounting rules in cases like Enron. A lot of the risks were hiding — but they can be traced. Some laws that are counterproductive and make regulation harder should also be examined, including the tax code that encourages debt over equity, and the bankruptcy law that overly protects certain financial practices.
LP: If we don't deal with the problem of Too Big to Fail, what happens?
AA: An ordinary person doesn't realize it, but the impact of this unhealthy system on them happens every day. It's doesn't feel as acute as something like leakage from a nuclear facility because harm from the financial system is a little more abstract. You only see it when it blows. But it's an unhealthy, inefficient, bloated and dangerous system. Because this system is so fragile, it can implode again, and our options next time will be dire again. We will either suffer a lot or bail out the system to suffer a little bit less.
I recently shared with my students a quote by the Rothschild brothers of London, writing to associates in New York in 1863: "The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or be so dependent upon its favours that there will be no opposition from that class, while the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests."
This is a great quote! We get tricked into thinking that we have a great financial system because we have our credit cards and whatnot. We don't see the enormous risks that are taken in derivatives markets and some of the other practices that can topple the entire system again and which extracts fees and bonuses. The truth is that we can have a safer system that serves the economy and society better. But getting there requires that better laws and regulations are implemented and enforced. The system will not correct itself; we must demand that policymakers do a better job for the public.
* * *
But apart from that, everything is awesome!??
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....actually "America's banking system" has proven to be a scam. Pretty fucking good one at that. Print the money, loan it out.......rig markets, WTF can be better than that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItjXTieWKyI
How fitting, the Titanic.
"America's banking system" has proven to be a scam
America's, and Europe's, and Japan's, and....
But don't worry, they know what they're doing! (And you DON'T, uppity serf!)
/s
Back to work peasants, there is nothing to see here, so move along now, or you'll find out you're not too big to jail....
and put in concentration camps if need be...
Here, check out the Peasant Fashion Show, brought to you by your friendly ChinaMart...
https://www.google.com/search?q=peasant+fashion&sa=X&espv=2&biw=1671&bih...
Funny part of this story is, the sheep think they are bringing their hard earned dollars to the bank to "save", and for safekeeping. Maybe they think the stawk market is too risky, so they want to keep their money safe. Then the banker turns around and takes the money they were just given and gambles it in the casino(stawk market). If the bank wins, they keep the big payout, and pay the sheep their .01% interest. If the bank loses the sheeps hard earned money, they just fleece other sheep to pay for their losses.
Remember: When you hand "your" money over to the bank, its not "your" money anymore.
Money is something they pull out of their ass to hand you for working, don't you get that folks?
They control the monetary supply, it's value, and it's circulation via attrition through taxes, legislation, price controls, security controls, and manipulation of the currency through devluation... Moreover, if too many people walk off with too much money, well they can always end the currency, and then what do they have? (That's right poker chips that are no longer accepted)
Keep stuffin da mattress large Marge, we cannot lose!
MonetaryApostate
At least it was a stable scam until the end of growth was reached.
1,000 points, serf!
Don't wish to harp on this too much but it comes down to the conversation being presented to society.
Entitlement for general population= BAD
Entitlements for corps; billionaires, shadow banking; Wall St.; politicians; int'l private institutions? These are not presented as "entitlements" but as day to day business. Above the law. Beyond discussion. But clear entitlement culture. Spit on the masses but give us all we ask for to survive.
Shit on welfare driven, food insecurity family for thinking there might be a social safety net BUT ensure we get everything we lobby for and steal at will...What is that but entitlement?
Might as well have JPM, Goldman, the Fed and all the rest showing up every month with their EBT? cards at the Walmart of the public purse and throwing hissy fits in court if their "welfare" is not honoured,
hang them high.
And before all the trolls jump on this.
It is not true in all nations, however, far as I can look at SS in US and CPP in Canada...these programs were funded by deductions and employer contributions over a working person's life. They have been funded. NOW governments have been dipping into this pool of funding over the years.
That is not "entitlement" of workers. It is what they clearly paid for. When the conversation lumps in all social safety net programs into one giant "begging welfare discussion" it is propaganda that diverts blame away from the continual theft of funds from workers.
I said it 10 years ago....the Gov. and banks are coming after the trillions of dollars of retirement funds (be it private or be it public/ payroll tax paid for).
Now Wall St. wants to "privatize" and localize this theft by taking over management of retirement accounts. Fees and theft closer to the piggy bank. MYIRA...my ass.
When the frig are people going to wake up?
"the banks" OWN the regulatory process; they OWN the conversation as long as it is about government/taxation/regulation. Any academic/talking head spouting ideas and words tickling theor ears will get money and facetime
There has never been anything on this planet, country, movement or business that is too big to fail. It has always been a matter of time, then, now and will be.
True, but a faster pace to that end for this would be greatly welcomed.
Now I have to call you on that, seeing as how I am among that group who has assiduously studied financial history.
The City of London Corporation appears to have been around almost forever, or at least before the Norman Conquest. (Probably dates back to Roman Empire times.)
It was people from that corporation which founded the original Wall Street investment houses.
The City of London Corporation also has the longest continuously existing money fund.
Interesting, huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/12/20/city-of-london-corporation-reveals-its-secret-1-3bn-bank-account/
http://treasureislands.org/the-city-of-london-corporation-some-initial-thoughts/
The City of London Co-operation of trade guilds is what made London.
It is still owned by those trade guilds(not bankers) to this day.Another strawman target.
Corporation was a contraction of co-operation.In vernacular English: to work for the
council, is to work for the corporation.
Please read some real history.
This world is not finished with time yet, we will probably kick the bucket before we see the failings.
The world is not finished with time yet?
May be true for the planet but the human race is doing it's level best to end the game for its own species and take down all other life with it. WHY? good question.
Jamie Dimon says it is God's work. and he is not alone. Life means nothing. It is money money money and power.
Monsanto says they wish to feed the world with garbage? and own all life. Patent every DNA strand. morph it and look at consequences on the autopsy table. (if anyone is left to do an autopsy).
Rothschilds et al feel compelled to own every living thing and every inch of life. Every dollar/dime. Infinite serf labour while hiding in the background.
So many corps involved in oil wish to deny the reality of peak resources as to pollute every square inch of this world for the last buck.
And all these sociopaths, psychopaths. Who, to be fair, may be product of GMO/food additive breakdowns....all these poor idiots who are being used to accomplish agendas they know not. But palms are greased and pipes are filled and women are crushed and children are trafficked and liars are worshipped.
Water is the next oil.
I find it interesting that after the meltdown we are having this discussion again. Wasn't Dodd Frank supposed to fix this? Didn't Obama have bipartisan support to fix things and didn't he promise to do so? (Like so many of his other broken promises).He actually met with the 'Thirteen Bankers' and told them the only thing between them and the pitchforks was him...so what happend in that closed door meeting? Nothing has changed; in fact the TBTF banks are worse now than than they were then.
WAKE UP
Meanwhile, over in Israel....
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/306466/vi...
Approximately 1,000 Ethiopian Israelis protested across Jerusalem, Thursday night, to demonstrate against the Israeli police. They have been referring to Baltimore.
But for the Times and the rest of the American corporate mainstream media - this isn't news at all.
Must.
Not.
Criticize.
Israeli.
Racism!
The odd thing is despite the censorship re Israel in the American press
http://www.alternet.org/world/how-israel-covers-its-ugly-racial-holy-war
It is absolutely plain that racism is not unique to the US, nor are [it seems] increasingly militarized police.
So, we have a story about TBTF... and we get the usual Jew-haters, polluting the conversation with their one great obsession in life.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
– Eric Hoffer
"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life"
"The Jews are called human beings, but the non-Jews are not humans. They are beasts."
- Talmud: Baba mezia, 114b
"The Akum (non-Jew) is like a dog. Yes, the scripture teaches to honor the the dog more than the non-Jew."
- Ereget Raschi Erod. 22 30
"Even though God created the non-Jew they are still animals in human form. It is not becoming for a Jew to be served by an animal. Therfore he will be served by animals in human form."
- Midrasch Talpioth, p. 255, Warsaw 1855
"A pregnant non-Jew is no better than a pregnant animal."
- Coschen hamischpat 405
"The souls of non-Jews come from impure sprits and are called pigs."
- Jalkut Rubeni gadol 12b
"Although the non-Jew has the same body structure as the Jew, they compare with the Jew like a monkey to a human."
- Schene luchoth haberith, p. 250 b
"If you eat with a Gentile, it is the same as eating with a dog."
- Tosapoth, Jebamoth 94b
"If a Jew has a non-Jewish servant or maid who dies, one should not express sympathy to the Jew. You should tell the Jew: "God will replace 'your loss', just as if one of his oxen or asses had died"."
- Jore dea 377, 1
CH1: "But don't worry, they know what they're doing! (And you DON'T, uppity serf!)
/s"
I'm just along for the ride. ;)
I pack lite.
30 seconds......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMXEOtxXRiM
Beat them at their game. No debt. Pack lite.
America's banks were founded as a service and utility to business and workers. The simple formula of workers and businesses savings and current account cash as deposits, the bank using prudent lendig standards to laon to home buyers and business operators. It morfed into nothing but another set of Trading Desks called a bank, with all the money creation rights of banks.
It's all fucked up. The only solution is to let them all go under, and start from scrath. If they complain, show them the food stamp offices, they can get a SNAP card the banker cunts!
America's banks were founded as a service and utility to business and workers.
No doubt some small banks were. But the Fed? The big banks? No fucking way. Scams from the get-go.
Unfortunately "business and workers" is so last century. But you are right as usual Jack.
Revolver Door
Project for a less fucked-up Century:
Take back national sovereignty from the banksters by ending the Fed/ECB/BIS and all other privately owned central banks designed to cheat and enslave the masses around the world.
Just say NO to Planet Rothschild and the NWO when the SHTF (and it will). Kill the Phoenix before it rises from the ashes of the inferno they designed.
No more pictures of Madeleine Albright or Hillary Clinton
Thanks for letting us in on that.
"The truth is that we can have a safer system that serves the economy and society better."
This is only the truth if that "safer system" is an entirely different system. The lie that begets all the problems is that the system of fractional reserve counterfeiting is a good system at all. The context of this article accepts the false premise that the underlying structure of the current system is not bad and that it just needs better regulation to make it good.
The means always beget the ends. Good cannot come from bad. Productivity, a healthy economy, comes from productive work, not theft and robbery from productive work.
The solution is not to continue wrestling with the monster's tentacles and instead go straight for its jugular and sever its head. The "banks" are not the problem. The problem is the monopoly of counterfeiting, the system itself, maintained by congress's third authorization to establish a national bank for the government. With over 100 years of context to observe, it is evident that this authorization was misplaced and has since been invalidated. Jefferson's original refutation was correct. A national bank is nugatory.
It will be even more corrupt when cash is abolished
I've been hearing this for years.... In another 2 years they can/will recycle this headline yet again. When Banksters start going to prison or the gallows, I'll start listening. Nuff said.
You can't regulate a system with so much moral hazard. Central banking and legal tender laws are government granted privileges that start the moral hazard ball rolling.
Radiohead, they know es Verdad... Es a cool video also...
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ
"Fragile House Of Cards"
Fragile, Systemically Corrupt, Morally Bankrupt, Fraudulent House of Cards
Fixed
"Too big to fail" is too big to exist. Everyone with a bank account at any international bank should immediately transfer ALL of their funds to a LOCAL Credit Union. STARVE the bastards!
These two women are naive.
They seem to think that regulations can be put into place to regulate the TooBigToFails. There are plenty of regulations & regulators already yet nothing is ever rectified because the money power simply buys off (or intimidates) any opposition.
It will likely require the trauma of a crash & burn to focus the public's attention on reforming banking. There might be a window of opportunity then. If any lesson is to be learned from the past & present it is that government WILL get hijacked in whatever it has authority over. Hence the obvious solution is to divorce government from banking, credit & money creation.
In the U.S. there is the established concept of separation of Church and State. I propose that be expanded to include Banking & State. Abolish legal tender laws. Abolish requirement for any sort of government charter to establish a bank & operate it. It's those very government mandates where the Cartel gains advantage. Ponder that last sentence.
It's the laws & regulations that get perverted time & time again. Why look for solution in an avenue so prone to corruption.
Look at the track record of government overseeing banking. Epic Fail.
Constitutionally, and in the context of Article Five's instructions to call a second convention of states, the evidence of the last 100 years invalidates Supreme Court leader John Marshall's reasoning (McCulloch vs Maryland).
All of Thomas Jefferson's refutations for a National Bank shine more clearer now than then.
Morally, fractional reserve counterfeiting is wrong.
Constitutionally, a National Bank (even if it were of a Full Reserve nature) is Unnecessary and Improper.
It's The American Curse >>> http://wp.me/p4OZ4v-3z
Eric Holder's too big to jail speech should have enraged people but it didn't.
A nation drugged up while theft occurs.
The article above was another example of superficial analysis, ending with silly "solutions," due to not going into a deeper analysis:
"Getting there requires" developing ways to understand how and why governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. Tragically, there are NO ways of "getting there" due to the public having been almost totally brainwashed to believe in bullshit, which means that they continue to think using false fundamental dichotomies, and therefore, want bogus "solutions" to realize impossible ideals.
Articles like the one above correctly present the political problems, BUT, only in shallow ways. The key to the successfulness of the best organized gangs of criminals being able to control civilization is that they develop control over their "opposition" groups. That is what the article above actually is doing, by not going into a deeper analysis, and so, concluding with the promotion of impossible ideals as the basis for "solutions."
HOW THE OPPOSITION THINKS IS CONTROLLED.
"The absolute best controlled opposition is
one that doesn't know they are controlled."
--- Cognitive Dissonance.
We once created a vast game that we called free enterprise capitalism. The rules were simple; however some of the players decided it would be easier to win if you cheat, so they found a loophole called the banking system and used it to skim the profits from those who played fair. And we let them do this, so they decided to try and bring more players into the game so that the exploiters could exploit more. This they called globalisation. And we let them. The next move will be to make the loopholes the basis of the entire game by moving to an "electronic only" monetary system so that they can skim the profits from every transaction in the game. And the only outstanding question is - will we let them?
The only way to actually "stop" them would to do what they do better than they do that ... However, since they already effectively control all of the publicly significant opposition, "we will let them" BECAUSE we can not "stop" them.
Schacht Mat,
Also, the cheating is not just "skimming" for the controllers of the exchange system.
The fractional reserve counterfeiting is the primary facilitator of "necessity" for a direct tax on the citizens.
Counterfeit purchases Treasury Bond/Notes, Government introduces counterfeit in to economy to steal products and labor, Government directly taxes citizens to pay those who hold the bonds and obtained them with the counterfeit.
The treasury does not have a treasure to manage. The collateral it posts is the citizens life.
This is not a game. This is not cheating at a game.
THIS IS THE MANAGED AND COORDINATED INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY.
"Man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not another's." ~ Aristotle
RM,
Psychologically, you may be right, but as long as one is still free to speak about it it cannot go unspoken.
I agree,
OC Sure!
"... as long as one is still free to speak about it it cannot go unspoken."
We owe it to our ancestors that relative freedom of speech was recognized as a legal right that the state should not infringe upon! We SHOULD exercise that freedom. Those of us who still enjoy some relative freedoms of expression and association mostly do so to the degree that our ancestors fought for those, and did so because, to some significant degrees, they believed in what they were fighting for.
Generally speaking, I regard militarism as the supreme ideology. In my view, the historical SOURCE of respect for individual rights and freedoms developed from the superiority of warriors that were NOT slaves. One pivotal example was when the Greeks defeated the Persians, with the story of the 300 Spartans being symbolic of those events. Warriors who were more respected as individuals could defeat larger numbers of fights who were treated as slaves by their masters. In my view, that was a primary reason why the American Revolution was successful, and led to the kind of American Constitution and Bill of Rights that were adopted by those who benefited from the military success of that Revolution. (Of course, there were lots of other big geopolitical events that also made that historically possible.)
However, as you pointed out, OC Sure, after the international banksters were able to corrupt governments to capture control over the public "money" supply, that system became a "MANAGED AND COORDINATED INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY." The deeper problems are that the vast majority of people barely have any clues about how clueless they are regarding that form of DEBT "SLAVERY." The ruling classes have been too successful, to long, in controlling the schools and mass media, so totally, that the vast majority of people not only do not understand the how the public "money" system really works, but also, have been conditioned to feel that they do not want to understand that. Virtually the total population of taxpayers ARE ENSLAVED, in ways that they are not aware of, and so, do nothing to resist. THEY DO NOT USE THE FREEDOMS OF ASSOCIATION AND EXPRESSION!
I have been working on those political problems for a few decades, and continue to do so through Canadian Electoral District Associations. The main thing that I have thereby PROVEN is that more than 99% of taxpayers always act like incompetent political idiots. Hence, although I have endeavoured to use my own freedom of association and expression as best I am able to, doing so has mainly driven me to discover and demonstrate that the overwhelming vast majority of people are abysmally ignorant about how the monetary and taxation systems really work, and mostly want to stay that way.
I have ended up posting my kinds of comment on Zero Hedge because at least here the readership is that tiny minority who are already somewhat aware of the social facts, and want to learn more about those. The funding of American political processes is several orders of magnitude more corrupted and crazy than the Canadian. But nevertheless, the same patterns manifest. IN FACT, 100% of the registered politics is paid for by less than 1% of the population, while 99% pay for none of the registered political activities. That has always been the case. Therefore, more than 99% of the people do NOT USE their freedom of association and freedom of expression to influence the funding of the political processes, which has enabled the less than 1% who did to end up totally dominating the monetary and taxation systems, as vicious spirals of crazy corruption, that benefit those who funded the political processes, in proportion to the degree that they dominated that funding.
The results are now that the established monetary and taxation systems are almost inconceivably crazy and corrupt, and automatically getting worse, faster, due to the ways that the vicious spirals of the funding of politics have driven the situation, to now be that those who have not participated are more and more objectively justified in not participating, since society has become too terminally sick and insane. Those who are pessimistic about the future of the political processes have all the evidence and logical arguments on their side. Those who are optimistic about the political processes have nothing much more than irrational hopes to sustain themselves with. It is easier to find way more people who are proud that they do not participate in the registered political processes than to find people who are proud that they do participate. There are OBVIOUS vicious spirals of people not wanting to participate in political processes that therefore become even worse, and then even more so people do not want to participate.
WE ARE AT THE POINT WHERE MORE THAN 99% OF THE PEOPLE DO NOT FUND THE POLITICS THAT CONTROLS THEIR LIVES, WHILE LESS THAN 1% DOMINATE THE FUNDING OF THAT POLITICS. In the USA it appears that 0.01% of the population are dominating the funding of the American political processes to an overwhelming degree, while more than 99% behave like Zombie Sheeple. Of course, it is WAY WORSE when one considers that the funding of the political processes is not only bribery, but also includes things like paying for assassinations of those who otherwise could not be bribed or intimidated. American politics has become runaway triumphs of organized crime controlling the governments, while the vast majority of Americans do not want to more fully understand that ... and even those who somewhat understand, then still can NOT actually do anything effective to compete with the ways that the established systems are so totally lopsided, due to the funding of the political processes continuing to automatically become more extremely unbalanced through every election cycle.
The entire political economy has become based on runaway enforcement of frauds, while the vast majority of people do not understand that, and to not want to understand that, and so, do not want to try to do anything about that. Furthermore, viewed from a relatively objective perspective, the established political systems HAVE BECOME SO COMPLETELY CORRUPTED that there are no practical, politically possible, ways to get out of the vicious spirals of the funding of the political processes being dominated by tiny minorities, which continue to become wealthier and more powerful while they succeed in doing so, in each increment that drives the overall situation to get still worse, still faster.
Money is a human symbol, and therefore, one of the most important media of expression. The freedom of speech with respect to money has become almost totally inverted and perverted. The freedom of speech regarding how money has influenced the political processes to drive vicious spirals of increasingly crazy corruptions are what the article above correctly reviewed. However, the more one understands that, the worse it gets! The real situation is MUCH WORSE than the article above presents. Any genuine "solutions" become MUCH MORE DISTURBING to consider, the more that one goes into a deeper analysis of the nature of the problems!
I continue to expect that the future of the established DEBT SLAVERY systems will be for those to drive debt insanities to provoke death insanities ... I WISH that I will be proven wrong! However, such a WISH appears to be based on nothing but irrational hopes. The main consistent theme throughout all of my political activities for several decades has always been that the more I learned, the worse it got! That is why I regarded articles such as the one above as being quite correct upon the superficial level at which it was presenting the problems in the established political economy, but ridiculously naive when it concluded with "solutions" which appear to deliberately ignore the deeper analysis of the astronomically amplified magnitude of the problems that there is almost NOTHING BUT integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, so that the entire political economy has a foundation based on governments enforcing the frauds of private banks.
To the degree that people's lives are controlled by money, they are being controlled by the established DEBT SLAVERY, while the vast majority of those people do not want to understand that any better, and so, there appears to be no practical political ways to do anything to prevent the runaway debt insanities from provoking death insanities. Moreover, after one fully considers the astronomically amplified scale of those problems (globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of force from atomic bombs) there do not appear to be any realistic ways to prepare for that either!
I may post comments on Zero Hedge, because there is a tiny minority of a tiny minority of the population who may read them and commiserate with me ... HOWEVER, I CAN NOT IMAGINE ANY WAYS THAT IS REALLY WORTHWHILE TO DO, NOR AM I AWARE OF ANYTHING THAT ANYONE IS ABLE TO ACTUALLY DO TO PREVENT OR PREPARE FOR THE RUNAWAY DEBT SLAVERY SYSTEMS AUTOMATICALLY GETTING WORSE, FASTER ...
In my opinion, we have already reached the point where our society is too terminally sick and insane to be able to recover from that. Hence, these days, I tend to use my freedom of expression mainly to lament that being the case. Every single day, I continue to prove, via my Electoral District Associations, the FACTS regarding the Canadian Political Contribution Tax Credit, that more than 99% of Canadian taxpayers act like incompetent political idiots, while the political funding situation in the USA is obviously several orders of magnitude worse!
RM, I read your posts and thanks for this one too.
In USA there are 4 courses of action to interact with the corruption.
1. A second convention of states per Article V of the constitution to directly address the problems of a 3rd National Bank and the Treasury's debt issuance with direct taxation as the collateral pledged.
2. Continue to boil like frogs and lose everything slowly.
3. Physically revolt and lose everything immediately.
4. [insert here another option that escapes me]
As to the article, the naivety is not indicated by the solution offered but instead by accepting the false premise that the fundamental system is Necessary and Proper. They don't seem to see that the system itself is the cause and instead relate only to the latest symptom of the cause.
The naivety and subsequent invalidity of their analysis is to analyse a problem while omitting the full context of the problem.
I know that there are a lot of clueless people out there but there are also many who do know. The problem is that those who do know cannot do anything to get away from this mess. The banksters now control every corner of the earth and they weild their power like tyrants. I wish that there was something we could do because I have tried everything but they are watching us. So no one can get away from them; even if they tried. The best we can do is fight back any way we can.
The author made it sound like the banksters aren't really responsible for their actions. In that he was wrong simply because it was the banksters who created the situation on purpose not by accident. They wanted to be bigger than every company and even bigger than the government itself. That way they can and still do control policy which of course includes leading us into unwarranted and unwanted wars. Some have even claimed and rightfuly so that 9/11 was created by them. Believe it or not but I find it kind of hard to believe that they fired and layed off all those people just before 9/11. Also the hijackers seemed to know a lot about what they could and could not get away with.
YES, foghorn!
"... it was the banksters who created the situation on purpose ..."
One of the typical things to observe is that mainstream morons rely upon the presumptions of Hanlon's Razor, that the problems somehow are due to incompetent stupidity, instead of malicious planning. The article above was implicitly doing that, which is why its suggested "solutions" were so grievously deficient!