Almost two years after the Wall Street meltdown collapsed the economy and threw 8 million Americans out of work, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission gets underway January 19th in Washington, D.C.
Will there be a new Ferdinand Pecora to get to the bottom of things?
Tiffiniy Cheng is guest blogging this week. She is the campaign coordinator for "A New Way Forward" and founder of "Open Congress."
Bailouts and political connections go hand in hand according to a just released academic study. The study, which was conducted by the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan researchers, shows concretely that lobbying, campaign contributions, and the finance/federal government revolving door has helped the most damaging banks despite the dangers they pose to our economy.
Perhaps you are making some year-end decisions to donate money in a way that makes a real difference. If you have not contributed recently, I would urge you to support SourceWatch and the work of the Center for Media and Democracy. Here is one more reason why: your donation makes possible CMD's crucial work on global warming and the fight to stop the destructive and dangerous use of coal.
My friend, author and activist Ted Nace, is CMD's partner in the CoalSwarm wiki inside SourceWatch. Ted has written a new book titled Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal, his most recent since his much-lauded Gangs of America. Climate Hope tells a dramatic story:
When US power companies revealed plans to build over 150 new coal-fired power plants, climate scientists sounded the alarm. If this wave of massive plants were built, there would be little chance of preventing greenhouse gases from reaching truly dangerous levels. In response to the crisis, hundreds of local and regional groups, along with a handful of national groups, rose to the challenge of blocking the wave of proposals. Through courageous action on a variety of fronts -- from sit-ins at coal mines to blockades at big-city banks -- the anti-coal movement succeeded ins stopping over 100 power plant proposals, bringing the coal boom largely to a halt.
The Center for Media and Democracy is playing a crucial role in this struggle through our partnership with Ted in creating the CoalSwarm wiki. Ted tells this story in his book, excerpted below. It's a success story that many other activists and organizations working on other issues could also repeat if they would follow Ted's example and partner with CMD to create their own wiki inside SourceWatch.
As you read this excerpt below, please consider donating to CMD's important work maintaining SourceWatch. As you see, it is a dynamic online information system that is invaluable to environmental, social justice and democracy activists, as well as journalists and the public at large. Success like this, often unheralded, is only possible with your ongoing support.
By any measure, the last decade was a rotten one. It started with a stolen election and the worst terrorist attack in American history. It is ending this week with the United States mired in two wars and deep into a catastrophic recession.
It’s hard to imagine that the next decade could be worse, but could it?
This Holiday Season, for too many Americans, "It's Not Such a Wonderful Life." Reckless Wall Street gambling collapsed the economy. The big bankers, like Mr. Potter, got theirs – an unbelievable $3 trillion in government help! It worked so well that Wall Street will pay out some $140 billion in bonuses this year.
But what about George Bailey and the rest of us? Where is the help for the 16 million Americans who are now out of work? The millions of unemployed facing foreclosure? The millions more teetering on the brink of personal bankruptcy?
More than a year after reckless Wall Street gambling collapsed the economy, no employee of a major American bank or financial institution is behind bars. This fact is all the more astounding when it comes to AIG.
AIG was at the heart of the financial meltdown. Their "innovative" use of risky credit default swaps (a type of insurance policy on bonds) helped transform boring bond trading into a highly leveraged, high-velocity global business.
Whatever the outcome of the final hours of wrangling at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen, the odds are that the leaders of some of the world's richest countries will earnestly declare that they are working hard to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at 450 parts per million (ppm) and ensure that global average temperatures don't exceed 2 degrees centigrade.
In a final end-game bid, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Australia are frantically trying to shoe-horn support for the experimental Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology into a final agreement from the COP15 conference in Copenhagen. By the end of the first week of negotiations, promoters of the technology failed to win support from one of the major committees of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
But just two days later, draft text prepared by the chair of one of the two 'tracks' of UNFCCC negotiations threw a lifeline to the coal and power generation industries by flagging that whether or not to include CCS in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as one of the most important issues requiring resolution. Including CCS projects in the CDM would provide a massive financial incentive for the development of trial CCS projects, most of which would be attached to massive new coal-fired power stations in developing countries. And this is just what groups such as the World Coal Institute and the International Emissions Trading Association have been lobbying for.
Bank bonuses are due to be announced. Perhaps, in the dead of night on Friday. The Wall Street Journal has already reported that they expect the total to top $140 billion. This is a record high and it was only possible because regulators flooded Wall Street with $3 trillion in cash, loans, guarantees and other forms of taxpayer support.
Center for Media and Democracy (CMD)
520 University Ave, Ste 305 • Madison, WI 53703 • (608) 260-9713
CMD is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit.
© 1993-2024