Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Best You Tube video I've seen all year

This video has nothing to do with canning or adorable conures sleeping in my hand, but it does combine my all-time favorite movie and my barely-contained fury over the last decade.  Thanks, Reagan, and all you doofus Chicago School economists, for ushering in the era of laissez faire on crack.

But I love this idea.  We might be able to take it back, one little bank account at a time.  Think it would work? Or are the megacorporations destined to dominate from here on out?

6 comments:

d. moll, l.ac. said...

do credit unions count?

RG said...

Come back to the 5 and dime Jimmy Stewart!!!

Besides mega-corps, there were a lot of people who thought they could live a lot higher than they should and still come out ahead.

Anybody heard of a failed credit union?

ilex said...

Diana, I think a credit union would be even better, since it's owned by the members themselves.

Rabbit saint, before the Glass-Steagall act was repealed, sub-prime mortgages were very rare. The problem with the mortgage bubble wasn't individual homeowners gaming the system-- after all, what average American knows what mortgages they qualify for unless they are told so by a professional? The problem was the mortgage banks who informed them, why yes, certainly, they could have a huge mortgage with little income-- the crooks knew it was an untapped goldmine. But they were able to rewrite the rules to their advantage only because of the vast government deregulation that began under Reagan and went haywire in the 90's. And worse, because of the way the laws were originally written for small community banks, the megabanks that gambled with our money got to privatize the profits and socialize the losses- thus, the bailout.

This is what happens when government regulations are removed. It's clear we need to reinstate the protections of the New Deal era-- which were originally put in place because of the first Republican Great Depression.

RG said...

Yup ... a lot of deregulation caused a lot of problems!

I was thinking of you today ... a friend gave us a quart of homemade kraut .. had some today .. yum! (I think shee needs more of those little seeds in it - are they caraway? Celery?

Then I got this story from another friend .. maybe you've seen it. Heck - maybe you started it! Sounds intriguing. Happy New Year!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-detroit-farms27-2009dec27,0,7336715.story

PJ said...

This is a great idea, thanks for posting it.outmob

PJ said...

Outmob? I think I was telling you my WV/word verification (who knows???)

I had a "disgreement" with my big box bank Friday night so this has been very timely. I'll be at the credit union up the street either tomorrow or the day after (it's frickin' cold down here and I don't want to leave the house!!!).