There Is Nothing 'Collateral' About It When You Suffer the Damage

by: jamesboyce

Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 11:36

"Now you don't talk so loud/Now you don't feel so proud/ About havin' to be scroungin' for your next meal"-Bob Dylan

It is not that the big banks themselves are "too big to fail".  They are too big because they can cause all of us to fail.  In the military terms, that tragedy is cleansed by the use of the innocuous sounding term, "collateral damage".

The problem is this: One is just as dead from collateral damage as from a targeted hit.

We launched www.BreakUptheBigBanks.com because the political power wielded by the big banks is incompatible with a functioning democracy.  Such political power renders regulation inadequate-we have already seen Congress bow to the will of the very people whom a year ago it rescued from oblivion.

This doomsday scenario is not based upon competing economic theories. We all know this to be true from our own painful and collective experience. No private institution should have that power-unaccountable, geared entirely their own self-interest, and able to cause massive 'collateral damage'.

We have, therefore, launched BreakUptheBigBanks.com as a public service.   It will take millions of you joining, signing our simple petition, and participating to make this successful.

There is no ideology behind this.  It is just as compatible with conservative's distrust of unaccountable political power as it is with liberal's wariness of concentrated economic power.  

Conservatives do not like regulation-once broken up, allowing the banks to operate within their prescribed realms will require far less regulation and bureaucrats to enforce, and far less micromanaging.

Liberals do not like concentrated economic power feathering its own nests at the expense of the general population-once broken up, the smaller banks will be far less able to effect the general population at all.

We can do it.  Go to breakupthebigbanks.com, and participate, actively.

For the price of one latte, you will be able again to sleep soundly.

Paul Abrams Co-authored this post