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In reply to the discussion: Don't link to COUNTERPUNCH. It's a far-RW racist trojan horse (No Click On It) [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)8. You should read more. CounterPunch gives you news and info you won't find anywhere else.
Did I tell you that you would agree with every article or author? No. You will learn a great deal at CounterPunch, such as this on the banksters:
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan
by MICHAEL HUDSON
CounterPunch, Sept. 22, 2008
Saturdays $700 billion junk mortgage bailout is the largest and worst giveaway since a corrupt Congress gave land grants to the railroad barons a century and a half ago. If it goes through, it will shape the coming century by giving finance unprecedented power over debtors homebuyers, industry, state and local government, and the federal government as well.
SNIP...
I should add that the solution does not lie simply in creating a new regulatory system, much less a single regulatory agency. After all, it was at Wall Streets command that the Bush Administration installed deregulators in all the key regulatory positions. This meant that regulations didnt matter at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), at the Fed under Alan Greenspan, at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under Mr. Cox (after William H. Donaldson resigned when the White House would not let him regulate as much as he thought necessary) or at the Department of Justice under Bush yes-men such as Alberto Gonzales. Politics and people have turned out to be more important than the law. We have seen the Supreme Court scrap the Constitution in the 2000 election with acquiescence from the Democrats, starting with Mr. Gores refusal to contest Florida.
To appoint a single regulator would prevent all other regulators and law enforcement officers, attorneys general, the SEC and so forth from enforcing honest financial policies in the event that an incoming president should appoint another Greenspan, Gonzales or other ideological extremist averse to the idea of applying existing regulations and honest laws. Under these conditions consolidated regulation would mean a free ride for crooks much like J. Edgar Hoover gave the Mafia under his tenure.
My alternative solutions are as simple as Mr. Paulsons, but of course are quite different. The public interest does indeed call for maintaining the economys basic credit, money-transfer, credit card and depository checking and savings functions. But not under the current venal and predatory management practices. It is this management that has lobbied so hard for deregulation, and whose industry representatives have insisted so strongly to place extremist ideological deregulators into the economys major positions. Therefore, the Treasury only should buy junk mortgages at current market price. The losses should be taken in order to re-even out the wealth pyramid that has become so much steeper under the Greenspan-Bernanke ploys. The banks knew full well that these mortgages lacked underlying value. The price of making use of this borrowing facility is to forfeit all equity stock to the government. The Treasury should prohibit any financial institution that sells or swaps securities to the Fed from paying any dividends to shareholders or stock options and bonuses to managers. It also should give the government priority over other creditors. Otherwise, firms that have negative equity will benefit purely at public expense, using the money to pay dividends, bonuses and exorbitant salaries.
Second, we need to restore the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial banks from risk-taking investment banks, mortgage brokers and other financial-sector flotsam and jetsam. Break up the mergers between banks and casino sell-side financial and real estate institutions. Just the opposite is occurring: On Monday, Sept. 22, the financial universe was transformed by the announcement that Mr. Paulsons Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs, was transforming itself into a bank holding company. The casinos are to take over the banking system as big fish eat little fish in the present financial emergency. It looks like new giants are emerging, already larger than the government in terms of the magnitude of the debts they have run up and certainly in their earning power. Indeed, who is to say that extracting interest from the U.S. economy will not emerge as the new form of taxation?
Third, re-write the bankruptcy laws to favor debtors once again, not creditors. This means reversing the current bankruptcy code sponsored by lobbies from the credit-card companies. The interests of the five million mortgage debtors faced with foreclosure and expropriation this year should rightly be placed above the interest (literally) of predatory creditors.
Fourth, sharply increase property taxes, shifting them back off labor and sales. We need to return to the classical idea of taxing unearned and unproductive income instead of adding to the price of labor and industry. What has been freed from the tax collector by the shift of taxes off property has not lowered the cost of housing and other real estate, or corporate costs of doing business. The income freed has ended up being paid to the banks as interest. The government still has had to raise money but in the form of taxes that fall on labors wages and industrys profits. So labor and industry now pay twice for what they formerly paid only once. They still pay the same overall amount of taxes, but also pay an equivalent amount of interest. The financial system is crowding out the government.
In the fifth place, we need to start discussing whether we really need a banking system that behaves in the way the present one does. In recent decades banks have made loans mainly to inflate asset prices by loading real estate and industry with interest-bearing debt. What if all banks were to be organized along the lines of savings banks, with 100% reserves. This is the Chicago Plan from the 1930s (currently revived by the American Monetary Institute, which holds its annual meeting this week in Chicago, by the way). This at least would go back to basics to provide a foundation from which to re-begin to discuss just what kind of credit the economy needs and what would be the best terms on which to structure financial markets.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/09/22/the-paulson-bernanke-bank-bailout-plan/
That was 2008, when we could've made the banksters put the money back. Instead, we bailed them out, including making AIG whole, 100-cents on the dollar, at a cost of millions who lost their homes and trillions from the US Treasury.
BTW: CounterPunch provides a forum for authors. That's also a lot different from Fox or Stormfront. From what I understand, they're filled with people who don't like to learn anything new. You know, uhnope, like censors.
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Don't link to COUNTERPUNCH. It's a far-RW racist trojan horse (No Click On It) [View all]
uhnope
Jul 2015
OP
You should read more. CounterPunch gives you news and info you won't find anywhere else.
Octafish
Jul 2015
#8
No, the OP says that there are way more wingnut/racist pigs posting there than there are lefties.
MADem
Jul 2015
#103
Counterpunch - How crypto-fascists and white nationalists are infiltrating progressive circles
kfreed
Dec 2015
#158
I like what he wrote about Don Siegelman and the ''corrupt Bush administration.''
Octafish
Jul 2015
#15
I haven't confirmed shit for you. Nor have you shown where you posted once in support of Siegelman.
Octafish
Jul 2015
#18
And if making up your mind is predicated in part on right wing and racist editorials
LanternWaste
Jul 2015
#148
No, just telling me to shut up is enough for me to see what kind of ''DUer'' posts, LanternWaste.
Octafish
Jul 2015
#149
Who would've guessed a Putin and Maduro apologia rag would be home to racist pieces of shit?
NuclearDem
Jul 2015
#5
VDare? Ugh! And PCR is an Infowars, JBS type. And unrepentant father of Reaganomics. Double Ugh. n/t
freshwest
Jul 2015
#7
Posters who insist on linking to that shit after they've been told about it should be banned.
NuclearDem
Jul 2015
#10
Never said it did. You must be used to putting words in other people's mouths.
Octafish
Jul 2015
#23
Absolutely--ND wins, OF comes off looking really bad, and JBerry gets a "Chuckles" prize for the
MADem
Jul 2015
#104
Is there some reason you're interested in linking to a front for white supremacists?
NuclearDem
Jul 2015
#14
There is no wonder about it, everyone here has noticed that too and yet the narrative goes on.
Rex
Jul 2015
#81
Jeff Blankfort is NO White Supremacist! His name does belong on that list and should be
2banon
Jul 2015
#68
Well you know how the Outraged here are always that way about others that are outraged!
Rex
Jul 2015
#84
BTW: The ''meldungen-aus-dem-exil.noblogs.org'' in the OP seems racist against Palestinians.
Octafish
Jul 2015
#30
Lists! Yes! Please add the New York Times to our Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
Karmadillo
Jul 2015
#47
Why are you guys so insistent on being able to link to white supremacists here?
NuclearDem
Jul 2015
#53
Authoritarians need to reaffirm for themselves occasionally their followers are still active and
polly7
Jul 2015
#135
Paul Craig Roberts, the first name on that list, is an anti-immigration white supremacist...
SidDithers
Jul 2015
#60
Please Remove Jeff Blankfort's name. He is Far Left, he's not RW. I know him personally.
2banon
Jul 2015
#63
Please don't think I think that Beltway Wisdom is the center and that deviating from it makes ...
DemocratSinceBirth
Jul 2015
#75
I have always thought that Counterpunch is an unselectively anti-establishment site that includes
LeftishBrit
Jul 2015
#93
Israel Shamir is a disgusting anti-Semite, and was used as a source on this site to defend Assange.
msanthrope
Jul 2015
#95
Why did Assange feel the need then to have his employee write such a disgusting defense?
msanthrope
Jul 2015
#100
Oh obviously, not wanting Paul Craig Roberts posted on DU means I just looooove Karl Rove.
tammywammy
Jul 2015
#131
Calling out white supremacist websites is just like the Holocaust and is anti-Democraticy!
Major Nikon
Jul 2015
#134
Presumably, if Stormfront published far Left Progressives, then linking to Stormfront....
shira
Jul 2015
#152
To some it seems like as long as that specific article isn't racist/anti-Semitic/homophobic
tammywammy
Jul 2015
#155
The people crying censorship don't seem to understand how these sites make money.
NuclearDem
Jul 2015
#156
+1. Looks like CP took the place of the crap that used to get posted here from wsws.
Tarheel_Dem
Jul 2015
#153