Thursday, September 22, 2011

Bankster's Paradise

Mark Thorburn

The International poobahs in charge of the Basel Agreement want to raise the reserve amount banks must keep on hand.  Wall Street is chafing.  







Here are a few excerpts from an interview with a clearly-upset Jamie Dimon, multi-bajillionaire president and CEO of the International Confederation of Verminous Rent-Seekers:
“I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel any more,” sobbed the multimillionaire. “I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American,” he said, stamping his little feet for emphasis.
So true! The brave little crapitalist went on to explain what is American, in his not-so-humble opinion:
“Our regulators should go there and say: ‘If it’s not in the interests of the United States, we’re not doing it,.” He declared, wiping the tears from his eyes with thousand-dollar bills.  (Financial Times – Rules Unfair)  
See? From the Wall Street vantage point, US Government regulators (“Our regulators, bought and paid for” as Dimon would express it) should go push around others and do the dirty work of US financial houses. He’s crying because the Basel Group is requiring him to have enough cash on hand to cover 10% of his gambling debts. 10 percent!

We have four options. I list them from most-statist to most-free:

$ Nationalize the big financial firms and park permanent camps of government regulators in their offices, in their front pockets, back pockets and nesting in their hair 24/7. The downfall here is that this would just make it easier for the bankers to co-opt the regulators and solidify the DC-NY-Davos Axis of Evil.

$$ Break up the big financial firms, smashing them into enough small pieces so that any one’s collapse would not bring down our economy.  This would put an end to "Too big to fail."

$$$ Reinstate Glass-Steagall.  This essentially would separate traditional banking from high finance and global investing.  Restricting FDIC type government protections to traditional banking and leave the financial high fliers and their exotic instruments to the whims of fate.  Not one more taxpayer dime for Wall Street!

$$$$ Trash the entire government-sponsored central banking scheme and return to a hard currency pegged to something real.  Outlaw fractional reserve banking, and put free-banking laws in place.  

What do you think?

Fractional Reserve Banking Causes Bubbles
Europe's Banking Crisis

11 comments:

Always On Watch said...

International poobahs

Ain't that the truth?

Anonymous said...

Here, Here!! Excellent. I nominate you for President!

Joe Conservative said...

Personally, I think that the "real problem" in banking are the financial instruments designed to "reduce risk" (thereby actually creating moral hazards where none previously existed). The idea that you can buy and trade "risk insurance" on a financial or physical assett that you don't even own (as in a 'credit default swap") (ala buying "fire insurance" on your neighbor's house) is simply "ludicrous". I mean, why even have laws against gambling and taking risks, when you can run an investment house like a casino and guarantee an ever bigger "cut" for the house?

Z said...

Are any of your options even remotely possible, SF? what would it take?

"Banksters"..well put, in some cases.

Silverfiddle said...

Z: I think some combination of #2 and #3 are well within the realm of possibility, #3 more so than 2.

Wall Street's stranglehold on DC and the world is a death grip. It would take brave politicians to break it, and we are short on such creatures right now.

Anonymous said...

I have long been a fan of Kotlikoff's Limited Purpose Banking. Her is one source you might want to read
http://people.bu.edu/kotlikof/newweb/LimitedPurposeBanking1-27-09.pdf

Silverfiddle said...

ConservativesonFire:

Thank you for the link. That is an excellent article!

I see future blog posts based upon this wise and educated man's writings.

Ducky's here said...

The limited purpose banking is interesting. The gold standard is asinine.

Now the financial system is currently out of control and divorced from its function in the wider economy. How do we resolve that? Elections? Are you kidding.

I was just listening to a guy on BBC who felt democracies have a very poor record dealing with financial crisis. I have to agree but at least w have enough sense to laugh at the gold standard.

Silverfiddle said...

The gold standard is asinine.

Going off of it has made things so much better! Right?

Joe Conservative said...

...it's good to have a "backup" system. ;)

Jersey McJones said...

Reinstating Glass-Steagall, and reinventing the Fed (switching to a real national bank), is the only answer. It isn't perfect - nothing is - but it's a lot better than what we have now.

JMJ