“The financial system has gone completely off the rails” - Transforming Finance

[BelgianMadCow]

A short docu on the financial system, the key problems and possible solutions. Quoting from Naked Capitalism, where I found it:

Transforming Finance, a 23-minute documentary film produced by the Finance Innovation Lab, features interviews with a number of the most prominent advocates of change in the world of finance. The film seeks to identify policy interventions to reform the financial system – both through incentives to persuade existing players to mend their ways, and through the promotion of alternative business models (such as peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding). The Finance Innovation Lab describes the film as both a “manifesto for action” and as a campaign tool, that will act as a catalyst for change.
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/12/victoria-chick-the-financial-system-has-gone-completely-off-the-rails.html#becG2eK6yRb6vErP.99

3% of UK bank balances deals with extending credit to the real economy. The rest is financial speculation. The system no longer serves its purpose. Like commenters at NC, I'm in favour of starting local complementary non-interest bearing fiat currencies.

[cantbeserious]

1. The Oligarchs, Corporations And Banks Own And Control The Politicians That Own And Control Us

eom

[rurallib]

2. yeah - it is a nice exercise in speculating what could happen

but people like this will never be near the steering wheel.

[DAngelo136]

3. The answer is right in our faces.

The solution to this is that communities must organize as a counter to the multinational corporation. We no longer can afford a "hands-off" "autopilot" democracy. There have been plenty of examples from the past; the "Share Our Wealth" plan of Huey Long, community owned banks and credit unions, worker co-ops and freelancers, agricultural co-ops, tenants associations, unions etc.
While the multinational corporations have the money, we citizens have the numbers and the votes. We have to bring back grass roots democracy to American life as opposed to the top down oligarchy of the corporation.
Don't get me wrong; corporations have a place in American life. We have to cut it down to size and put it in a regulatory cage and make the directors not only accountable to it's shareholders but to the community it is chartered by and exists within.
Just as We, the People created this monstrosity, so we can also destroy it or at the least, transform it.