Wall Street Braces for New Cops on the Beat

[NicholeW.]

Wall Street Braces for New Cops on the Beat.
by Pam Martens, CounterPunch. 1 June 2009.


http://www.counterpunch.org/martens06012009.html

For the past eight months, we have been a nation focused on bailouts and bankruptcies. For the past ten years, we have been a nation ignoring massive wealth transfer and wealth concentration through a rigged Wall Street.

As simple and clear as this picture is, some of the brightest minds in this country are unwilling to connect the cause and effect of wealth in too few hands to bankruptcies and a tanking economy.

Wealth-deprived consumers can't buy the goods and services being produced. This leads to repetitive cycles of layoffs and growing unemployment which leads to more wealth-deprived consumers leading to more overcapacity in production plants, more layoffs, more shrinking purchasing power.

[tekla]

It's not just that these solutions will not solve the problems, and I'm not sure they can be solved, but for sure, these solutions are only going to make the problems worse.

[lisagurl]

It will not solve the problem just spread the pain over time.

[tekla]

I'm not sure we have the time to spread it over at this point.

[NicholeW.]

And I get the feeling that the "pain" and where it's being spread is not onto those whose actions created the "pain." Seems like they get a lot of soothing while others get the pain.

Just take Chrysler, for instance. A 30 day bankruptcy? I did one back in the mid-90s that took five years to pay off. If I had had an opportunity to wipe away all my debts and be released after 30 days I'd have never started the process to begin with.

Now where is this so-called pain?

[tekla]

Well the pain seems to be going to those who built the cars, and not those who invested in them.  The banks are pretty much getting off scott free.

[NicholeW.]

Well the pain seems to be going to those who built the cars, and not those who invested in them.  The banks are pretty much getting off scott free.

Exactly so. And not to all who "built the cars." Mostly to those who actually "built" the cars and to those who sold them, or didn't.

The banks appear to be the ones pained as little as is humanly possible in favor of allowing the taxpayers to feel the pain.

[lisagurl]

The hay day of the automobile was killed by population and traffic. More roads added more cars. People moved to places far away from their daily actions requiring them to drive and spend more time in their cars. This time could have been spent with friends and family. But no one is making a profit if you spend time with friends and family. Only the public can fix the problem with community. Working and living close to your life. Forget traveling and the electronic self enclosed world of the corporate mind set. It might even curb crime if people were interested in community.

[tekla]

The death of the auto has a lot of factors involved in it.  Rising fuel costs, auto prices that are too high for average folks to invest in them, counterculture stuff that disdains the auto and the world designed for it, the sheer number of them that has caused both congestion and the lack of places to put them when we are not using them.  In any contest in SF to get within 4 miles I can beat a car by using my bike every time.