A just penalty for bankers

I have been thinking of bankers. I admit, I have thought ill of them most of my life. All bankers are not bad. There are good men among thieves.

But the bankers at the top of the financial world have caused too much misery and death in this country. I am short on love and compassion for them. Many a poor soul, some innocent of any crime, have been strapped to a gurney while the law stabs its needle into their arms, men, some condemned and executed for heinous crimes, but who have been responsible for far less pain and far fewer deaths than these world bankers have caused.

We are at fault, of course. We have fallen into the belief that those who have money must be respected and trusted. We have delivered our lives and well being to them. They have betrayed us. The culture on Wall Street practices the idea that profit is morality. It is all right to steal, to gouge, to throw poor people out in the street in the cold of winter if it promotes profit. On the other hand it is moral to tell people they must buy certain cars and homes and TVs if they wish to be acceptable, even if they cannot afford it, even if they must become financial slaves to pay off the banks.

Consumerism, which at the moment is being touted by the money cartel as necessary to save the nation, is another word for slavery. We suffer only a different master. The black slave of old at least knew his master’s face. Black slavery was cruel beyond understanding. But the master was a living, recognizable being, wicked as he was, who did not hide his identity from the slave.

The slave masters today are the banks. They are faceless corporations who exercise their mammoth powers against ordinary citizens, sit in plush offices, fly in private jets and exercise their dominion over whole nations. The people they injure and kill by their profit decisions are as faceless to them as they are to their victims. Their victims are mere numbers on endless pages, victims who are now asked to save the bankers.

I am not for the death penalty, even for bankers. But if I were to choose a punishment against those who have exercised their evil power of profit over our injured and dying citizens, it would be that these bankers might drown in the tears they have wrought in pursuit of their insatiable, wicked greed.

Technorati Tags: banking system,slavery,personal freedom,financial meltdown,white collar crimes,economic crisis,banking fraud,credit card debt

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The art of catching pigs

Recently someone wanted to talk about catching wild pigs. Why should anyone want to know? There are a plenty of domestic giant hogs running loose on Wall Street.

He told this story:

“You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs discover it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence.

They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The storyteller then suggests that that is exactly what he sees happening to America.”

I say, I have rarely seen a corporate executive who was hungry. Yet more than a half million children in America go to bed hungry each night. Tell them and their parents the pig story.

The cruel irony is that the pigs, the giant hogs on Wall Street and elsewhere (they thrive in Washington D.C. as well) are engaged in capturing the people upon which they feed. One hog asks another: “Do you know how to capture innocent citizens? You make false promises. You lie and cheat and commit all nature of fraud, and the innocent people, believing that huge investment houses and corporate businesses with legendary names would never steal from them entrust we hogs with their money. It is that simple.”

The irony proves to be even more insidious. Corporate America, the non-living, non-breathing composite hog has captured massive numbers of Americans, indeed, most, through television, teaching them year after year what they must buy in order to be cool. They are taught to buy on credit. They are taught to mortgage their homes and cars. They are taught “to shop until they drop.” Then the corporate glob teaches them how to get out of debt by going to a debt-consultant who takes more of their earnings to help them keep the corporate hog fed.

Corporations do not build fences to catch people. They throw propaganda nets, called advertising, over the people. The bait in the nets is the TV shows that people watch, and as they watch they are gradually dumbed-down and captured by endless corporate propaganda that tells them how they must spend their earnings to be acceptable — the new car –the new TV set – the diamond that is a symbol of love — on and endlessly on.

Now that the people are in debt and need help, the corporate hog would doubtlessly love the pig story. The questions the corporate hog now asks hard-working ordinary people are: “Why don’t you work even harder to feed yourself and your family? Why aren’t you independent like you should be? Why do you want something free?”

Now the irony approaches absurdity. The giant hogs have eaten themselves. Nothing remains. Their lies and their frauds have been exposed. Their destruction of trust and their rejection of basic American values has now become rampant. And the hogs come begging to the people, ride their corporate jets to Washington, and beseech the people to save them.