Inspired by Bill Moyers of PBS, apparently these protests were the Left's version of the Tea Party protests slated for Tax Day on April 15th.
Quite frankly, I didn't care who was organizing the protest as the objective was the same as what is being called for on both sides of the aisle OUTSIDE OF WASHINGTON: the prosecution of the financial and political elites whose fraud has decimated the world economy. On this topic, the following Bill Moyer's interview is of the utmost importance:
Maybe there's finally an issue where the American Right and Left can come together for the common good?! This truly constitutes a 'new way forward'!
Coincidentally, at the end of the rallyI attended, I spoke with a gentleman name Donny who apparently kicked off the whole "A New Way Forward" movement just a few weeks ago by creating the related web site. I briefed him on my personal background in the study of economics and found that we were in essential agreement regarding the current financial crisis, its causes and its solutions. In this regard, the following email correspondence occurred this evening:
Hi Donny,
Just got home from the protest.
I'm truly amazed by what you have started. What's more, it seems synchronicity that we met in that your proposed solution is precisely what I and others like myself have been calling for. Remarkably, I did not even read 'the idea' of your movement until now:
http://www.anewwayforward.org/the_idea/
This is right on the mark!
I especially appreciate this:
People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.
"Economic science" is a contradiction in terms. Having studied economics through the PhD level, I assure you these pontificating academicians are clueless to market realities. Their institutional gains became rooted in forging a false religion of the rationality and social benefit of greed. Nevertheless, their's is nothing but a false religion and they've unwittingly destroyed the world economy ASSuming what they believe is true even though it has been increasingly contrary to historical realities.
You should link to Moyer's interview with William Black on your site if you've not already done so. Here's the link:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
Here's a related link:
http://real.jour.missouri.edu:8080/ramgen/kbia/billblack.rm
Keep up the good work and please stay in touch!
-J
Hi J,
Great to meet you. So glad you came out today in the rain. I guess things were much better on the West Coast... 300 in LA, 400 in Portland, 300 in SF. Not bad for pushing wonkinsh financial policy. Glad you like the idea page. I wrote that in basically one sitting on an airplane and every time I've reread it, I still am able to stand by it.
Thank you for all these links. I will be checking them out. William Black's interview is great. I have been thinking of this as deliberate systemic fraud all along.
Best,
-Donny
It's not deliberate persay a conspiracy to reap havoc on America's financial future by those with our worst interests in mind. However, it is deliberate in the sense that people in a position to know better opted for quick profits and fat bonuses in the short-run when this was clearly at the expense of their companies and the world economy in the long-run.
Either which way, what has occurred is fraud on a vast scale of which the perpetrators are still running the show and seeking to cover up and unwind their crimes at taxpayers expense. The key issue is whether or not taxpayers will simply stand idly by as trillions of their tax dollars are misspent, or will their be a popular uprising to put an end to this nonsense and put the wrongdoers in jail or at least in the unemployment lines they helped to create.
You are currently aligning yourself and your movement with those in economics that actually understand economics, the crimes of greed that have occurred and the hard solutions to the problem.
I must highlight again William Black, and place high emphasis on James Galbraith, son of the famous author of The Great Crash, 1929, John Kenneth Galbraith. These professors are key to the solution.
Now, how do you bring sufficient popular pressure to bear on the political elite that have long been lackies of the financial elite to replace the Timothy Geithners from the system with regulation-minded outsiders like William Black and James Galbraith?
I think the solution is a protest movement needs to focus in on the actual costs that American taxpayers are incurring for these bailouts. For the most part, these costs are unrecognized by the masses although there is some sense the costs are signficant and not necessarily serving the people's best interests. As the truth of what's going on and how much it is actually costing taxpayers is revealed, I believe the people will rise up in angry rebellion to the fleecing underway.
In this light....below is the key, recent Bloomberg article to consider.
If the $4.2 trillion spent thus far had simply been given to the American people, a check for $14,000 could have been cut to every man, woman and child in the nation....or a check of around $50K could have been cut to every U.S. household. The major drag on the economy is the excessive debt burden on U.S. households and businesses. Imagine what $50K per household would have done to alleviate that distressing burden? Instead, most of the money has been wasted on bailing out insolvent financial institutions that, while on the government dole, continue to register profits and pay themselves exorbitant bonuses and salaries at our expense. Meanwhile, $14K per American has been spent by the government for which taxpayers are ultimately responsible .This is a crime against America and the wrongdoers and the political elite acting on their behalf need to be brought to justice before our nation is completely bankrupted IMHO.
I believe the insanity of this situation is best described by the following question I have posed elsewhere: Why are taxpayers loaning money to banks so that banks might make loans to taxpayers? In effect, this is what's happening. Trillions of tax dollars are being spent to bailout insolvent financial institutions in the hope that these financial instutions will become solvent again and start providing credit (loans) to the American people who are bailing them out in the first place! If you want to stimulate the economy, then insolvent banks should be closed down and the American consumer should be bailed out of their exorbitant debt burdens. It's that simple. The circuitous route being taken is preferred by the financial and political elite simply because those now running the show were running it before and they are TRYING DESPERATELY TO COVER UP THEIR CRIMES. Should we pay for this? I don't think so.
Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...CA4&refer=home
By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s.
New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. include $1 trillion for the Public-Private Investment Program, designed to help investors buy distressed loans and other assets from U.S. banks. The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008.
President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with the chief executives of the nation’s 12 biggest banks on March 27 at the White House to enlist their support to thaw a 20-month freeze in bank lending.
“The president and Treasury Secretary Geithner have said they will do what it takes,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said after the meeting. “If it is enough, that will be great. If it is not enough, they will have to do more.”
Commitments include a $500 billion line of credit to the FDIC from the government’s coffers that will enable the agency to guarantee as much as $2 trillion worth of debt for participants in the Term Asset-Backed Lending Facility and the Public-Private Investment Program. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair warned that the insurance fund to protect customer deposits at U.S. banks could dry up because of bank failures.
‘Within an Eyelash’
The combined commitment has increased by 73 percent since November, when Bloomberg first estimated the funding, loans and guarantees at $7.4 trillion.
“The comparison to GDP serves the useful purpose of underscoring how extraordinary the efforts have been to stabilize the credit markets,” said Dana Johnson, chief economist for Comerica Bank in Dallas.
“Everything the Fed, the FDIC and the Treasury do doesn’t always work out right but back in October we came within an eyelash of having a truly horrible collapse of our financial system, said Johnson, a former Fed senior economist. “They used their creativity to help the worst-case scenario from unfolding and I’m awfully glad they did it.”
Federal Reserve officials project the economy will keep shrinking until at least mid-year, which would mark the longest U.S. recession since the Great Depression.
The following table details how the Fed and the government have committed the money on behalf of American taxpayers over the past 20 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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