Reply #27: not true

[Two Americas]

We have one of two options:

1. Capital managed so that it serves the producers and the people.

2. Capital controlling and exploiting the producers and the people.

Saying that "we have to have banks" neatly avoids that question, and always is used as an apology and a defense for option number two.

Since the New Deal, option number one has been in place in agriculture. That is why your access to food is not in the same shape as your home equity and 401K and wages and job security are now. You would be very hungry otherwise.

There is no "financial crisis" or "credit crunch" or foreclosures happening in farming as there is everywhere else. Government agencies protect the farmers from the financial industry and the banks and Wall Street, so that the people can eat. The same program could be used to make sure people are housed and working and have access to health care. It is a simple matter of getting the financial industry out of the power position. It can be done, has been done, and now must be done.

There is no credit crunch in farming, there is a shortage of applicants. Why is that? Because to qualify you have to commit to farming - to actually producing something. That is just about the only qualification. You cannot use the money, as everyone is trying to do, to make an investment in the hope of turning it and getting rich from it. No one wants to farm. Why is that? Because everyone has been seduced by the Reaganomics promise of the fast and easy buck.

Why work, why value work and the producers when you can get faaaaaabulously rich by cleverly turning, leveraging, investing, futuring, swapping, deriving and managing your portfolio? So the producers and the workers and the people are punished and impoverished, and the few, a very few, grab massive wealth. Pretty soon no one is producing anything, the workers are broke, the elderly, infirm and the children slide into desperate poverty, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down on us.

Asking "do we need banks" is asking the wrong question. That is like defending child abuse because "we need parents" and saying that if there were no parents, the children would be worse off.