The Financial Crisis: Seize the Time!
by
Cynthia McKinney
The author is the Green Party's presidential candidate.
"The
very foundation of the U.S. economy is crumbling underneath our feet."
We the people must now seize the time! We have always had the capability
of determining our own destiny, but for various reasons, the people failed to
elect the leaders who provided the correct political will. There was
always some corporate or private special interest that stood in the way of the
public good. And they always seemed to have the power of the purse to
throw around and influence public opinion or our elected officials. The
very foundation of the U.S. economy is crumbling underneath our feet.
This represents a unique moment in U.S. history and we must now seize the time
for self-determination--for health care, education, ecological wisdom, justice,
and all the policies that will make a difference in the lives of the people
including an end to all wars, including the drug war!
The crisis was staved off for a time for some of our major finance engines when
they were able to obtain bridge funding from certain sovereign wealth
funds. That option grows increasingly dim as The Federal Reserve is
becoming the lender of last resort. This means that the people are
becoming the owners of the primary instruments of U.S. capital and
finance. This now means that the people have a say in how these
instruments are to be used and what their priorities ought to be. The
people should now have more say in how their tax dollars are spent and what the
priorities of government and the public sector must be. We the people
must now set our demands to ensure and promote the public good.
Now, as we ponder the importance of this moment to do good and serve the needs
of the people, some politicians have already figured out their answer for
us: win or steal the next election, prepare for more war, and leave it to
others to try and figure out what to do next. While banks are failing all
around us and the U.S. taxpayer is drenched with news of billion-dollar
bailouts for *selected* companies, the Congress, which has utterly failed in
its twin responsibilities of setting policy and Executive Branch oversight,
plans to adjourn instead of setting new policies; lessening the impact of the
economic freefall on innocent victims; or stopping war, expansion of war, new
war, and occupation.
"The U.S. taxpayer is drenched with news of
billion-dollar bailouts for ‘selected' companies."
In a dizzying turn of recent events, we have all witnessed the collapse of
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage providers, investment banks Lehman Brothers
and Bear Stearns, and insurer American International Group (AIG), and other
companies. So far, at least eleven banks have filed for bankruptcy this
year. The case of the AIG bailout is particularly curious as Merrill
Lynch was denied taxpayer largesse. I wonder if AIG was the selected
company for bailout because of its relationship to the U.S. intelligence
community and what others would discover if AIG's books were opened in an
audit. The last person to get close to AIG and its shady operations was
Eliott Spitzer.
But some more fundamental issues must be explored here, relating to the
underlying assumptions that have guided U.S. political and economic activity,
particularly over the last eight years.
The Bush Administration's "anything goes, just don't get caught"
attitude has set the tone for what we are witnessing today. To be sure
these problems didn't start in January of 2001, but they sure were allowed to
accelerate during the George W. Bush Administration. For example, what
tone was set when the Administration shipped $12 billion to Paul Bremer's
provisional government in Iraq in cash on wooden pallets for Iraq
reconstruction? No wonder $9 billion of it was "lost."
What I'm constantly reminded of is that the money didn't just vanish, somebody
got it. Now it's up to us to find out who!
However, the Administration's blatant disregard for good governance, the rule
of law, standards of moral and ethical conduct, and even etiquette, when
coupled with a laissez-faire, "go-along-to-get-along" attitude from
Congress meant that no holes were barred and no hands were on the deck--a sure
prescription for disaster.
In my reading over the course of the last few years, I had to become somewhat
conversant with the language of the new economy: bundled mortgages,
securitization, SPEs, SIVs, derivatives. But in addition to the old
concepts that always seemed to be with us--predatory lending, redlining, no
affordable housing amid "the housing bubble,"-- it soon became clear
that basically folks had figured out a way to make money off of a ticking time
bomb. Kind of like prisons for profit. And even though the Enron
scandal was supposed to have cleaned up a lot of this, unfortunately, even
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regularly engaged in some of these practices and
that's why you and I own them today. I believe it is true that the very
foundations of the U.S. economy and conventional political behavior have been
shaken. Now is not the time for business as usual. And although
this is by no ways exhaustive, here are a few things that I think the
Democratic-led Congress could work on now instead of adjourning:
1. enactment of a foreclosure moratorium now before the next phase of ARM
interest rate increases take effect;
2. elimination of all ARM mortgages and their renegotiation into 30- or
40-year loans;
3. establishment of new mortgage lending practices to end predatory and
discriminatory practices;
4. establishment of criteria and construction goals for affordable
housing;
5. redefinition of credit and regulation of the credit industry so that
discriminatory practices are completely eliminated;
6. full funding for initiatives that eliminate racial and ethnic
disparities in home ownership;
7. recognition of shelter as a right according to the United Nations
Declaration of Human Rights to which the U.S. is a signatory so that no one
sleeps on U.S. streets;
8. full funding of a fund designed to cushion the job loss and provide
for retraining of those at the bottom of the income scale as the economy
transitions;
9. close all tax loopholes and repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the top 1%
of income earners;
10. fairly tax corporations, denying federal subsidies to those who
relocate jobs overseas, repeal NAFTA.
And since the Congress plans to adjourn early and leave these problems to The
Federal Reserve, The Federal Reserve should operate in the interests of the
U.S. taxpayer and not the interests of the private, international bankers that
it currently represents. This, of course means that The Federal Reserve,
too, must undergo a fundamental ownership and mission change.
"This crisis truly represents the opportunity to
introduce fundamental changes in the way the U.S. economy and its political
stewards operate."
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