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.
Gerry Spence's Blog 