Time to REBEL! 5 Ways We Can Break the Big Banks’ Death Grip on the Economy

Published on August 10, 2012 by admin   ·   No Comments

 AlterNet

Let’s be honest. Many people are feeling a little hopeless and cynical about whether anything can change how Wall Street banks run roughshod over the economy and our democracy. We’ve marched, rallied, sat-in and thousands have been arrested–and yet bankers have remained unrepentant, unpunished, unindicted and seemingly untouchable. But the wheels of history are turning and Wall Street’s incredible greed and arrogance may have finally handed us the tools and leverage we need to challenge and break the death grip Wall Street has on struggling people and communities around the country.

Two critical tools–the LIBOR fraud scandal and the potential to start exercising eminent domain

to seize bank-owned properties–can supercharge the ongoing campaigns focused on Wall Street. For the first time we can align moral and legal arguments with real leverage to demand that banks renegotiate the debt that is bankrupting communities and drowning homeowners around the country. The single most important step we can take to address local budget deficits is to force banks to renegotiate toxic deals held by local government and to rewrite mortgages for underwater homeowners. Combined, this would pump hundreds of billions into local economies.

First some definitions:

The LIBOR fraud scandal may seem confusing, but it is really pretty simple. Over $800 trillion in loans, derivatives and other financial deals are based on LIBOR (the London Interbank Offered Rate). The banks fixed the rate to increase their profits at our expense and now everyone all over the world is trying to figure out how much it has cost the rest of us.

Whatever the ultimate number is (there are estimates of hundreds of billions in damages), this scandal has permanently torpedoed the notion that there is “moral hazard” in debt relief for regular folks. We can now prove what we’ve always suspected–that the big banks have rigged the game in their favor and that our deals with them are inherently unfair and should be renegotiated. Oakland, California has taken a first step by demanding Goldman Sachs renegotiate a toxic swap the city is trapped in, saying it will boycott Goldman Sachs in the future if the bank won’t renegotiate.

Read Entire Article HERE