Too Big To Fail is just plain TOO BIG.
Activists will be in the streets of Chicago tomorrow to protest the American Bankers Association meeting. These banks took bailouts that add up to $15,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. They claimed they were “too big to fail.”
But instead of using the bailout to help the economy, they actually reduced lending that would keep people working, increased foreclosures, charged outrageous overdraft fees and – surprise, surprise – gave themselves record salaries, bonuses and perks.
The reality is that these corporate criminals are too big and powerful politically. Explaining why even minor reforms have been bottled up in Congress, Senator Durbin from Illinois admitted that the banks “frankly own the place.”
TAKE ACTION NOW!
They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on politics and they’re using our bailout money to become bigger and more powerful (rather than helping people and the economy through a crisis).
These ‘too big to fail’ banks are a threat to democracy as much as they are a threat to the economy. Even Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, and Mervyn King agree: It’s time to break up the banks.
We have to break their grip on Congress, break up their political and economic power, break up the corporate crime spree and break through this economic crisis with a major jobs program, new regulations (like the Consumer Financial Protection Agency), new financial institutions that put workers and communities first and a new economy that works for everyone.
[...] the past year, JwJ coalitions have been calling for a break up of the “too big to fail” banks, new regulations that make the finance sector work for the economy and a large scale national jobs [...]