Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone and Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism explain to Bill Moyers how similar are the workings of the big banks to organized crime syndicates. Taibbi had an article where he expanded on this idea.
Whatever happens, however much they ruin things for everyone else, the banks never pay the price but instead the people who were victimized by them are the ones who are expected to reimburse their losses. We see this not only in the US but also in the current European bailouts, which are actually bailouts of the big banks.
And in the case of the record fine levied on Barclay’s Bank in here in the UK for colluding with others to fix the interbank loan interest rate, it quite literally was organised crime.
This is one of the most concise presentations of the crime syndicate story that I’ve seen. I could barely tolerate Matt Taibbi’s recent story in Rolling Stone; had to leap to my feet, gnashing my teeth, every few minutes.
Pirates. Snakes in Suits. I hates ’em.
Crime for sure, but is it “organized”? 🙁
What’s astounding to me is that something like financial derivatives have ever been legal. These kinds of “instruments” serve no actual purpose whatsoever. They’re leveraged bets explicitly designed to be completely incomprehensible to the people buying them. That’s deception and reprehensible; there shouldn’t be any need for debate about it. The degree of leverage is absolutely absurd on top of it; you have these derivatives whose supposed value is ten to even a hundred times as much as the actual asset they’re being derived from!
The historian in me recognizes that the financial system has always been rigged. Literally anyone with half a brain can take a look, for example, at the gold standard and figure out that’s corrupt in almost no time. “What? The entire economy will be run on gold? Why? What possible reason could justify that?” However, what is apparently not quite so obvious to some is that the centralized banking system, built as a network of private entities supported by national governments, is similarly corrupt. There’s no reason why a small handful of individuals should make the key decisions which determine quality of life, and often life or death itself, for most of society. What we have really is oligarchy and plutocracy in the most meaningful sense. Neither of those are compatible with democracy in the long run.