It has been several years since the great recession and the American economy is slowly pulling itself out of the abyss. Real Estate prices have mainly rebounded around the country. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has hit an all-time high of 18,000.Unemployment is at 5%. This is false because the official number does not take into consideration the massive amount of workers who have given up or are underemployed. Further, wages have remained stagnant the last several years. The average person in the US has not benefited much from the booming stock market and rebound in housing prices. Many American’s are still struggling to survive financially.
Wall Street and the big banks are roaring along like nothing ever happened and back ripping off the American population. Yes, the leeches of the financial industry have come out from the other side of the economic meltdown as clean as a whistle. Other than the miscellaneous insider trading scandals, none of the players working at the too big to fail banks or other Wall Street firms have been held accountable for practically destroying the global financial system.
The United States government has given the financial wizards on Wall Street a free get out jail pass and the American public was told to keep their mouth shut and be lucky to just have a job. The Federal Reserve provided boatloads cheap cash to the banks and these financial institutions plowed that money into securities and viola the stock market went to record highs and the banks and a many other Wall Street hot shots made another bundle while the average Jane and Joe sat on the sidelines barely able to put cereal on the table for their kids.
The vast majority of both the House and the Senate members sit on their high and mighty thrones and continue to look the other way, thus allowing the banks to continue to stick it to the American people. These politicians who talk out of the sides of their mouth about banking reform, are nothing but stooges who suck the kneecaps of financial industry power brokers who actually run the country.
Yes, the commercial and investment banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, private equity funds and other Wall Street operators are the ones pulling the purse strings in America. The platinum schooled highly educated governmental policy wonks who design the regulation for the finance industry are either coming from the tight knit investment world, or after a few years in government, heading to top tier investment or commercial banks, or some other investing funds, to make the big bucks. The investment industry is one vicious cycle that has only one goal. Make as much money as possible with a total disregard for the American people. The phrase “churn them and burn them” used by cold calling stock brokers is done on a global colossal scale by the mega banks and investment firms on Wall Street.
The megalomaniac gigantic banks need to be broken up.. The investment funds also need to be far more highly regulated and steep criminal penalties need to be put in place for obvious criminal misdeeds. Laws need to be rewritten that makes it evidently clear what is a crime in finance. Close the loopholes, color in the grey areas and design legislation that has extremely sharp teeth to cut into the abuse happening on Wall Street. High monetary penalties are in order. America needs government officials who are not controlled by the finance industry to pass laws that outline very clearly what is criminal. Stop pussyfooting around and halt the bullshit. White collar crime is crime. America has an unbelievable amount of poor inmates sitting for years in prison for petty drug offences while rich white collar financial crime defendants get off with a slap on the wrist. Since the great recession, the only people who went to prison were a few Ponzi schemes operators, a whole bunch of mortgage fraud bit players and a slew of insider trading minnows.
If new much harsher regulation is not implemented, the big banks and the high on the hog Wall Street executives will continue to use creative finance as a weapon to destroy America. The masters of global finance only think of the how much more money they can make in order to live in larger multiple homes, drive fancier cars, purchase rare artwork, travel by private jet, and have prettier younger trophy wives. Meanwhile, the average American worker is more and more up to their eyeballs in debt, increasingly scraping by eating macaroni and cheese, soup in the can and drinking generic soda pop while figuring out how to pay the mortgage or the rent.
Copyright© Edge of Humanity LLC 2016
