The New F***ing Citibank - watch more funny videos
When the smiley face of Fascism comes, it will be dressed up in tight cashmere vees from Lisa Kline Men, controlling every bottom feeder’s banking business intimately as a well worn undergarment clings to a hungry belly standing in a long line, awaiting rations. (Special thanks to the FOD Team, Eric Appel and Seth)
Oh, the banks will be nationalized? I can hardly wait. Let’s not forget to thank Chris Dodd and Barney Frank for wiping out the savings of retiring baby boomers, since these two pushed the Community Reinvestment Act which made banks extend loans to individuals who had no possible means to repay. But that's all water under the shopping cart.
Even so, this push to nationalize the banks is being used by the Masters of the Universe as the ultimate “let’s give this powerless citizenry another wedgie” in their gymnasium locker room of tricks designed to distract and loot what’s left of the middle class in America. Distracting the American public has got be such a fu*#ing riot for these boys, I swear I can almost hear the frothy cackle of their towel snapping laughter in my sleep.
For all of their greed and profit hording, they know better than anyone that reinstating regulations which were gutted during the Bush Administration (previously in place since the Great Depression to prevent unorthodox lending and profiteering) is essential. By deregualting, this gave bankers the license to steal. It's that simple. By the way, are there billions of dollars in the stimulus bill to investigate, round up and prosecute white collar criminals from the private and public sectors responsible for robbing the bank? They know better than anyone else that by restoring the job opportunities they stole from its citizens so that they could turn their cheap tricks with third world hustlers will build up and restore the wealth of this country again through the production of tangible goods and services right here.
With so many M&As going on, maybe the large unemployment lines, the nationalized bank lines and bread lines to nowhere can all merge, killing three birds with one stone.
Oh yes, these Very Important People – these Masters of the Universe are working very hard to suck the freedoms, the access, the hard won privileges from the despised middle class have it all figured out. Service – and Sacrifice -- with a smile.
Cordially,
Mel Toast
5 comments:
If based upon no other reason, the fact alone that Geithner & Co. don't want to nationalize the banks is enough reason to suspect it may be the better way to go.
That's been on the tip of my brain, too.
This video is hilarious! (I don't think it would come to the "take a number" scenario they (FOD) spoof.)
When you take a close look at who's running Obama's Economic Advisory Board, you know that the same corporate and beltway cronies who are are cooking up ways (technology/IT software, accounting and auditing firms) to "monitor" the banks are basically one and the same. The worst thing would be for nationalized U.S. banks and corps to go the way of China's fucked up, "who's your daddy" nepotism model where everything is run by somebody's brother and their in-laws.
So if the U.S. banks are nationalized, why would the GS run, Geithner & Co. fear the U.S. Gov't. having a 51% ownership stake in the banks?
I suppose a few rogue, subversive hens in the U.S. Government fox house could potentially (in a just world) start making bank CEOs bark like dogs for their reduced salaries and paltry bonus checks...that could really be fun.
If the average CEO hauls in $10M per year, that's $5000 per hr., which is 700 TIMES MORE what the Goldman Sachs owned Burger King's average, exploited janitor makes at barely minimum wage ($7.00 per hr.)
I think of nationalisation as bad when the state unilaterally confiscates the property of people who are operating a properly functioning business or enjoying the benefits of their lawfully held property. This sort of nationalisation lacks legitimacy - at least in the yes of the property owners. I won't get into the moral and ethical issues of how they may have secured that property in the first place. "Legal" may still have been unjust in a broader sense.
In the case of the US and the UK and other jurisdictions today, the situation is quite different. There is - effectively - no property at all left to confiscate. The banks' liabilities far and away exceed their assets. The shareholders are all holding shares that aren't worth anything at all. Their "asset" isn't just an empty shell, it's a great sucking vacuum in financial space where a bank used to be.
To "save" these black holes, taxpayers have been convinced they need to fork out trillions of dollars or their world will end. The taxpayers are filling the void left by the gross incompetence of the people who used to run a bank but now run a huge empty nothing.....
If taxpayers are now providing the capital, they MUST gain ownership of the asset. There is no rational alternative.
In the US, the structures of government have been made overly complex and grossly inefficient (by design, intended or otherwise). Worse, people have been told this mess is actually perfect and can't be changed.....despite being in obvious and desperate need of change for more than a century.
The consequence of not being able to see through those myths is that you - Americans - are lumbered with incredibly bad government. Terrible. So you treat people from the government like crap and they harden up and return the favour by being "bureaucrats"....
That it doesn't have to be this way - and isn't in many other countries - isn't a truth any American wants to hear. But it is true. If Americans would - COULD - take a cold, hard look at the mess their deeply Constitutions at state and federal level have created all around them, they might just insist on fixing it...and the consequence of fixing it is that the United States might actually work properly for the first time....well....ever.
I bank with a bank owned by the state - the government of New Zealand.
It was created by the government in order to - initially - service customers the big commercial banks didn't want to deal with. Low income folk. People on state benefits of one sort or another. Elderly people with few savings and no liquid investments. Charitable groups. Sports clubs....and so on.
It does an excellent job. The service is among the best of any of the banks. The banking fees are low because the government wants them to be low. This puts pressure on the other banks to have low fees, too. So whether you bank with the state-owned bank or not, it saves you money just by being there.
There are places where being "government owned" is actually well thought of. But those are places where democracy actully functions, politicians are accountable to voters and the apparatus of state runs reasonably smoothly and transparently.
The US doesn't do democracy well. Or accountability. Or transparency.
No WONDER the place is a mess and people hate the Government.
But the only way out is to change the mess and corruption that the Constitution has created, enabled and perpetuated for over 200 years....and that would be contrary to the official state myths about perfection, balance and the infallable Founding Fathers.
That the 2 year term in the House is little more than a monster corruption engine doesn't matter.
That each 2 years over 98% of House incumbents are re-elected doesn't matter.
That there are only 435 reps for districts averaging a MONSTER 750,000 people EACH...doesn't matter.
That state legislatures gerrymander federal district boundaries to lock up the vote for one party or the other - for decades - doesn't matter.
Yet it does matter. It's WHY everything is so screwed up, the government gets it wrong and that guy at the DMV treats you like shit.
So fix it.
Truth Seeker is so spot on that I am in awe! I am a native born US citizen and I agree with everything this "down under" analyst sez.
The US constitution, from the get-go was flawed. The "founders" were trying to make a better government than the European Parliamentarian system. However, they did not trust the un-landed commoner. So they put this Electoral College buffer between the voter and the vote. And a four year term (no way to do a vote of "No Confidence").
OK, well they failed to make a better government. There was a good reason that the Parliamentarian system was used (for tons of years). It was because it WORKED!
So what do we have? The f-ck-ed up Electoral College (and by that, we don't mean that they actually went to COLLEGE!!). It's winner take all, which means that we have a two-party "system." And by "system," I mean "shut up, sit down, and take it up your system!"
I do agree that Americans don't trust their government and that this is a problem. But the FUNDAMENTAL problem with Americans is that they think in WILD WEST terminology. It's US vs. THEM. There is no WE. I step over some guy sitting in a gutter. He must have done something to deserve this (Calvanist thinking). He isn't one of US.
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