Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich just had a great column on his
blog about the relationship between Wall Street and the decimation of the American middle class — that once broad, deep, strong group of people who created the American Dream, the folks like my grandparents who clawed their way out of poverty and sharecropping.
Seems the banks too big to fail are up to their old tricks again, the same tricks that crashed the American economy and the global economy in 2007.
They are not investing in productive enterprise and job creation. They’re trading inside information and, “the Street’s lobbyists have gotten Congress to repeal a provision of Dodd-Frank curbing excessive speculation by the big banks.”
They have proved they are a clear and present danger to America and Her People. If justice were served, they would be nationalized, broken up, and we would never again hear the phrase “too big to fail.”
Robert Reich reminds us that in 2007 these same banks with their ridiculously reckless speculation and investment in phony instruments, “crippled the middle class and poor — consuming the savings of millions of average Americans, and causing 23 million to lose their jobs, 9.3 million to lose their health insurance, and some 1 million to lose their homes.”
Unfortunately, both Democrats and Republicans have crawled in bed with the snakes.
It is time we follow the leadership of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and demand the party that relies on our muscle, sinew, boot leather, and money–the Democrats–stop colluding with those who would destroy us.
Image source: Senator Bernie Sanders