This is an appropriate and timely phrase for our country in light of the sappy day of “love” that we annually celebrate today on February 14th. We have collectively failed to send our bankers any Valentine’s Day cards, flowers, or gifts. By simply replacing “banker” in this post’s title with the original word “woman,” we get the original line from the 1697 Play “The Mourning Bride” by William Congreve. (The line is frequently misattributed to William Shakespeare.)
We now know why the largest U.S. banks, despite trillions of dollars worth of direct subsidies, loans, guarantees, and artificially low interest rates from the Federal Reserve over the past 2 years are still not lending in our deep recession. From various interviews with bankers, we have learned they are very upset with the American public that has the gall to not love them and who are instead constantly criticizing and vilifying them. Oh – the cruelty of it all!
Multiple national poll results show universal antipathy, loathing, hatred, and anger for our greedy, self-centered, incompetent financial system. But our bankers tell us if America doesn’t worship and love them unconditionally, they are just not going to make any loans to individuals, households, and small businesses, regardless of how much they need the money – So there you ingrates!! You see, bankers have feelings too and we’ve hurt them deeply by withholding our unconditional love, worship, respect and affection just on the basis of a few trifling indiscretions and mistakes they made just to make us happy over the past few years.
If Americans don’t gladly take what unregulated banks give, they won’t lift a finger to get anyone or this country out of the deep recession. Instead, they’ll find a lot of great investment opportunities in China and India where the people love them unconditionally and who work like slaves for a pittance in compensation doing jobs once held by Americans. In fact, they can make more money with no risks involved in merely buying Treasury Bills and other debt instruments from the Federal Government – their only “friend” and willing benefactor in the world today.
Thus after years of engaging in the callous financial “rape” of most bank customers, charging usurious and unregulated interest rates on every type of loan imaginable, savaging all types of bank accounts with hidden and frequent fees, inventing new financial instruments that exist solely to generate immediate fees and profits and later bankrupt most borrowers, and then packaging and selling billions of dollars of worthless and over-valued bundles of residential and commercial mortgages across the globe, banks and our financial wizards expect us to take even more of the same crap – and just love it. Even the Marquis de Sade was more sensitive.
Banks vigorously use the public dollars we gave them to turn around and bribe a majority of our spineless Congressional members in the House and Senate to block any meaningful bank reforms and systemic financial regulations so they can continue their wanton raping and pillaging. These consummate sadists and sociopaths regard Americans as a bunch of stupid masochists who deserve and want the treatment they receive. They expect perpetual love and respect when they only give scorn, hatred and financial violence in return. If this were another time and place, most bankers would be found on the wrong ends of public guillotines.
Americans are disappointed and angered by the pervasive national environment of corrupt crony capitalism as practiced in tandem by Wall Street and Washington DC in a complete perversion of a vigorous and reasonably-regulated free market. We now realize that our President (former biracial “wunderkind” and alleged man of the people) may be just a stooge for the status quo and a secret champion of the best interests of Wall Street over Main Street. His utter lack of action, now coupled with condescending words designed to make bankers happy and to fool the general public, strongly indicates he’s not on the side of the vast majority of Americans and small business.
In President Obama, we didn’t get an updated version of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but instead we got a talkative, taller and thinner version of Justice Clarence Thomas. We didn’t get any new combination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Kennedy but instead we got a 21st Century blend of James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover. The President and his advisers are simply “pooh-poohing” the uneducated and angry masses who just don’t understand the complexity of it all and how much they’ve done for – or to – us.
This issue alone – the overly-generous with no-strings attached bank bailouts starting with President Bush and continued by President Obama – is the largest and most unifying issue for most Americans across the political and economic spectrums. The complete failure on the part of two Administrations and multiple Congresses to see how coddling banks is destroying this country, makes one wonder whether we have any representational democracy left in Washington DC. Antipathy for the financial sector is the only bi-partisan, post-partisan rallying point most in America embrace with near unanimity. It is no wonder the entire electorate views our Government as clueless, corrupt, wasteful and completely out-of-touch with reality.
In this deep recession, we have 1 out of 5 American workers either unemployed, underemployed or burnt out from unsuccessfully seeking new jobs for more than 6 to 12 months. We have another 3 out of 5 American workers scared they are only 2 paychecks, a spousal job loss, or 1 health crisis not fully covered by insurance, away from financial ruin. 1 out of 4 homeowners have mortgages exceeding the value of their homes and that number, along with every type of property foreclosure, continue to grow monthly across the U.S. 1 out of 4 children are growing up in poverty, and income disparity reaches levels not even seen during the 1920’s.
Yet during this national crisis, bankers happily pay themselves huge bonuses in cash and stock rewarding themselves for incompetence and the “savvy” ability to manipulate Congress – all the while the rest of the country’s real incomes and net worth decrease unrelentingly. The median annual household income is just around $50,000 – having remaining essentially flat or falling steadily over the past 10 years while most of the country’s income and wealth has inured to the wealthiest 5% of the country.
Bankers are partying as if it were still 1989 instead of a repeat of 1789. When at a time many Americans can’t afford bread, our financial sector is gorging itself on cake after decadent cake. No wonder the public has growing indigestion for our President Playing Louis XVI. Some of the few “green” shoots of economic progress in this recession involve the strong growth of private security firms who protect the ultra-rich in their gated communities. The top 5% of wealthy Americans are getting a bit scared of the other 95% “restless natives” – who happen to possess a huge arsenal of constitutionally-protected guns. Americans have always preferred the peaceful change of national policies through the ballot box. But if we see no major change in 2011 and beyond in the way Washington DC looks after the rest of the country, we’re going to see a massive exodus of this nation’s wealthy to Luxembourg, Singapore, Costa Rica and Belize.
It should not surprise anyone if a majority of incumbents are voted out of office this coming November, regardless of their professed political and economic views. If they can’t represent any of the public’s best interest over the short-term interests of the sociopathic financial industry, they don’t deserve to be our elected representatives.
If President Obama doesn’t promptly see the light and radically change his waffling positions with respect to the nation’s financial sector, he’ll be out of office in 2012 faster than you can say “Jimmy Carter.” Unfortunately the way things have moved in Washington DC over the past few years and in 2009, coupled with the extreme public positions of both political parties, no one should hold a breath hoping anything gets accomplished within the next 9 months.
Politicians Beware: “Hell also hath no fury like an electorate scorned.”
Submitted by Marc Pascal happily ranting from warm and sunny Phoenix, AZ. At least my spouse and I after almost a dozen years together are still happily and foolishly in love. I wish everyone a Happy St. Valentine’s Day!!!