Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Tax the speculators and create a public bank (12:29m video)

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

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Tax the speculators and create a public bank (12:29m video)

The Real News Network interview with Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Excellent exposé of the recent bankster shenanigans and changes that should be made (but likely will not be).

JAY: Now, one of the things that came out of the McClatchy series was that Goldman was betting against its own properties it was selling clients. So it was selling these bundled mortgages to a pension fund, and over here is buying insurance from AIG because they knew that the whole thing was going to crash. But there was no regulation that caused them to disclose to their clients that they're betting the other way over here. What do you do in an environment where the people writing the regulation, they're all coming from Goldman, so that the people who were playing that game are the ones supposed to be writing the rules now?