Even I'm surprised. Household debt hits 16 trillion

[Woodznutz]

Do you think structuring banking as a public utility affects the debt/equity debate?

Banking as a Public Utility – with Ellen Brown | Michael Hudson

"The fact is that banking should be a public utility.

"Privatized banking has not really helped the economy, because it makes loans basically against collateral.

"When you make loans against collateral – the house, real estate, corporate stocks and bonds – the effect of bank lending is to increase the price of this collateral.

"You end up with a high-priced economy: high housing prices, high retirement-income prices, high insurance prices.

"And you can’t have a viable public banking system built on the wreckage of the commercial banking system that has almost committed suicide, as you’ve described.

"You’re not going to be able to go forward."

Regardless of who owns the banks they would operate under the same conditions and regulations.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

"Money, as Karl Marx lamented, plays the largest part in determining the course of history.

"Once speculators are able to concentrate wealth into their hands they have, throughout history, emasculated government, turned the press into lap dogs and courtiers, corrupted the courts and hollowed out public institutions, including universities, to justify their looting and greed.

"Today’s speculators have created grotesque financial mechanisms, from usurious interest rates on loans to legalized accounting fraud, to plunge the masses into crippling forms of debt peonage.

"They steal staggering sums of public funds, such as the $85 billion of mortgage-backed securities and bonds, many of them toxic, that they unload each month on the Federal Reserve in return for cash.

"And when the public attempts to finance public-works projects they extract billions of dollars through wildly inflated interest rates."

Overthrow the Speculators

"Money, as Karl Marx lamented, plays the largest part in determining the course of history.


A failed journalist?
Your failure is more understandable, knowing who you look to for economic wisdom.

"They steal staggering sums of public funds, such as the $85 billion of mortgage-backed securities and bonds, many of them toxic, that they unload each month on the Federal Reserve in return for cash.

Silly speculators....the Fed made hundreds of billions in profit off those bonds.

"And when the public attempts to finance public-works projects they extract billions of dollars through wildly inflated interest rates."

You should definitely use all your money to finance those groovy projects at lower interest rates.
If you had any money. LOL!

 

[georgephillip]

Of course they can. And?

Let's ask Ellen (who knows far more than you ever will):

Banking as a Public Utility – with Ellen Brown | Michael Hudson

"You could pour money into the real economy in the form of universal basic income or any other kind of helicopter money, relieving student debts, etc.

"And because that economy is actually short on money, it would fill that gap, the difference between debt and the money available to repay it."

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Let's ask Ellen (who knows far more than you ever will):

Banking as a Public Utility – with Ellen Brown | Michael Hudson

"You could pour money into the real economy in the form of universal basic income or any other kind of helicopter money, relieving student debts, etc.

"And because that economy is actually short on money, it would fill that gap, the difference between debt and the money available to repay it."

"You could pour money into the real economy in the form of universal basic income or any other kind of helicopter money, relieving student debts, etc.

Excellent idea, we need more Bidenflation.

 

[JohnDB]

Considering the answers in this thread, the lack of real knowledge of how the economy works, and the MSM perpetuating the lies of politicians....

We are doomed

 

[initforme]

16 trillion isn't much considering the population. A pittance

 

[georgephillip]

If I borrow $10,000 against my Bank of America stock, how much is the price going to rise?

Matt Taibbi on Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail

 

[georgephillip]

None of the desperate employers in my area would agree with you. My favorite is the crab restaurant advertising bigger than the fact that they sell crabs, "WORK TODAY, GET PAID TOMORROW."

"Food for Less" (Kroger) where I shop offers the same incentive.
Decades ago the only similar employment opportunities like that were on skid row in downtown LA.

 

[georgephillip]

Regardless of who owns the banks they would operate under the same conditions and regulations.

Compensation for top executives at public banks would be much different from today's private, for-profit institutions. Public banks would not engage in speculation. Public banks would prioritize employees over (nonexistent) shareholders.

Home | Public Banking Institute

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Matt Taibbi on Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail

Thanks for the link.

What's the answer?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Public banks would not engage in speculation. Public banks would prioritize employees over (nonexistent) shareholders.

Exactly!

They'd be too busy making crony loans to friends and family of politicians.

 

[georgephillip]

Silly speculators....the Fed made hundreds of billions in profit off those bonds.

Who owns the Fed, rich speculators on Wall Street?

The Fed Hasn’t Spent a Dime Yet for Main Street Versus $735 Billion for Wall Street

 

[georgephillip]

A failed journalist?
Your failure is more understandable, knowing who you look to for economic wisdom

Who will remember your "successes" 140 years after your (richly deserved) death?

"Political economist. Philosopher. Journalist? Two hundred years after his birth, Marx is remembered as many things — but not often as a member of the Fourth Estate.

"James Ledbetter sees that as a mistake. The editor of a 2008 volume of Marx’s journalism called Dispatches for the New York Tribune, Ledbetter makes the provocative case that we should see Marx as a journalist first and foremost.

"In the following interview, conducted by Steven Sherman shortly after the book’s release, Ledbetter discusses the content and significance of Marx’s long journalism career."

Marx the Journalist

 

[Flash]

President Potatohead is destroying this economy.

Trump handed Potatohead a post pandemic recovering economy complete with a vaccine and like Obama said he always does to everything he fucked it up.

 

[georgephillip]

"You could pour money into the real economy in the form of universal basic income or any other kind of helicopter money, relieving student debts, etc.

Excellent idea, we need more Bidenflation.

We need to stop borrowing from the richest one percent and begin taxing them instead.

Biden promises wealthy donors he would not 'demonize' the rich

 

[georgephillip]

Matt Taibbi on Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail

If I borrow $10,000 against my Bank of America stock, how much is the price going to rise?

No idea.
How much would your Bank of America stock be worth without US taxpayer support?

Matt Taibbi on Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail

"It’s been four years since the government, in the name of preventing a depression, saved this megabank from ruin by pumping $45 billion of taxpayer money into its arm.

"Since then, the Obama administration has looked the other way as the bank committed an astonishing variety of crimes – some elaborate and brilliant in their conception, some so crude that they’d be beneath your average street thug.

"Bank of America has systematically ripped off almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, depositors, homeowners, shareholders, pensioners and taxpayers."

 

[georgephillip]

Exactly!

They'd be too busy making crony loans to friends and family of politicians.

Would they cheat the unemployed during a pandemic?

Federal Regulators Fine Bank of America $225 Million Over Botched Disbursement of State Unemployment Benefits at Height of Pandemic | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"In its investigation, the CFPB found that Bank of America engaged in unfair and abusive acts and practices that resulted in Californians not getting their unemployment benefits at the height of the pandemic, when many people needed the money the most.

"Specific findings include that the bank:

• Replaced reasonable investigations with a faulty fraud filter: In the fall of 2020, and continuing through mid-2021, Bank of America changed its practices for investigating prepaid debit card fraud on the unemployment insurance benefit accounts.
• 
  
• "Instead of conducting reasonable investigations, it implemented a fraud filter with a simple set of flags that automatically triggered an account freeze.
• 
  
• "This set a low bar to freeze the unemployment insurance benefits of many people, harming thousands of legitimate cardholders needing the money.
• 
  
• "The bank also retroactively applied its fraud filter to deny some notices of error submitted by prepaid debit cardholders that the bank had previously investigated and paid."

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Who owns the Fed, rich speculators on Wall Street?

The Fed Hasn’t Spent a Dime Yet for Main Street Versus $735 Billion for Wall Street

All those were repaid. The US Treasury made money.
The Fed is part of the government.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Who will remember your "successes" 140 years after your (richly deserved) death?

"Political economist. Philosopher. Journalist? Two hundred years after his birth, Marx is remembered as many things — but not often as a member of the Fourth Estate.

"James Ledbetter sees that as a mistake. The editor of a 2008 volume of Marx’s journalism called Dispatches for the New York Tribune, Ledbetter makes the provocative case that we should see Marx as a journalist first and foremost.

"In the following interview, conducted by Steven Sherman shortly after the book’s release, Ledbetter discusses the content and significance of Marx’s long journalism career."

Marx the Journalist

You're right, I'm not responsible for the death of tens of millions, like Marx and his idiot followers.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

We need to stop borrowing from the richest one percent and begin taxing them instead.

Biden promises wealthy donors he would not 'demonize' the rich

You should definitely stop borrowing.