[quote=Rt.66]……
When I say revenge to bankers, I was thinking along the lines of an entire industry that produces nothing of value (banks) and yet has somehow managed to wiggle itself into the best seat in the house by tying a majority of society into lifelong debt servitude.
I thought some might see that, and appreciate seeing it destroyed somewhat.
Add in the fact that we have been doomed to generations of higher taxes already from the tax payer money gifts the Gov. has bestowed on banks. Why weren’t they allowed to fail like we are allowed to fail? Why do they get our money to insure their profits?
Like Hatfield said, it would have been cheaper and probably a much shorter recession/depression if we had allowed the insolvent big banks to fail, covered deposits with FDIC, auction off the bad debt assets and let the many healthy banks pick up where the failures left off.
Instead we get privatized profits and socialized losses for the banks that pull our Gov’s strings.
Do you deny that these banks get to charge us crazy interest charges all our lives, live on multi-million dollar bonuses and then when they make mistakes and need to face a loss (like those contemplating walking away from an under-water mortgage) suddenly are worthy of our tax dollars to keep them whole and keep their party rolling?
Why defend these people?
If we are gonna live in bizzaro America then why not give money to home owners instead of giving it to banks. After all the problem is failing mortgages, failing homeowners (which lead to failing banks) why not cut out the middleman and give the money right to the source of the problem?
Why is it fair that they get our money AND our houses? Because the plan is to instead use OUR money to pat the backs of the “good old boy” network and keeping the elite, elite. Doesn’t that piss you off? Enough to want to see them get an ass kicking, even a little?
The choice of paying for this with our taxes OR NOT paying for it with our taxes is off the table, either way WE pay. Heads they win, tails we lose!
We should all demand housing at levels affordable with median income for a given area to be paid off in 10 years, affordably.
Who’s idea was it to let housing get so out of control that it takes and unaffordable 30 year loan to rent a house (oops I mean own) from the banks?
Others can chose to be lifelong debt slaves but my rule is ten years of affordable payments at median income levels and I own it or I don’t buy. Don’t bet against it coming in a few years.[/quote]
I don’t quite know where to begin, so I’ll try somewhere.
Banks are important, but they are still mostly just intermediaries. When you get a loan from a bank, you may have to negotiate with, and repay, an employee of that bank, but you are really taking money from, and repaying, the people who deposited their money with that bank. The employee just makes it easier for you, so you don’t have to actually go out and find someone to lend you money every time you want to spend $1000 more for new furniture than you have in cash at that time.
Yes, bank employees and owners pocket a portion of the money flows, and it adds up to a nice chunk of change, but it’s still only a small % of the underlying money flows amongst depositors and borrowers. Those money flows are the big money.
In normal times, small adjustments in banking revenues do flow through mostly to bank employees and owners. But the really big adjustments we’ve seen recently, when borrowers were taking 2-5 times to pay for a house as it was worth for most of human history, and depositors were throwing the money at them (through the banks) without thinking, and then it starts to revert to normal, dwarf anything that can be absorbed entirely by bank owners or employees. Some of it flows through them, but the rest – most of it – is way too big and affects borrowers and/or depositors. In our modern no-responsibility economy, the taxpayers and savers (through govt-engineered inflation) are brought in to cover the losses.
At this point in the game, the banking sector is insolvent. They are propped up only by promises of taxpayer money. So lowering banking revenues, by limiting credit card fees or whatever, is just increasing the amount of money that innocent bystanders – the taxpayers and savers – will have to fork out to support the whole over-indebtedness party.
