Recovery for Who?

How is it that economic recovery is well underway, when we have an unemployment rate of 9.8%, possibly headed toward double digits? That rate doesn't even include the underemployed: those who are working less hours, for less money, those too discouraged to look...the long-term unemployed, etc. President Obama assures us that the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator and it will catch up. But will it? And if so, when?

So, who is recovering? Why, Wall Street, of course, and the wealthiest wealthy Americans...the only ones who count, apparently.

Well, there's got to be a better way.

A New Way Forward is a movement of citizens representing the call for reform.

Their mission is to transform the public's relationship to the monetary and economic policies that govern our lives. Their platform is structural reform of the financial industry. They want to change the American financial industry from one that skirts and dictates laws to reap false profits for the few at the expense of the many into one that takes its proper place as a facilitator of general prosperity. They demand a financial industry that does not actively work against the interests of the public but that is stable and secure, prudent in risk, and manageable in failure.

We want Congress to step up to the plate and restructure the financial system. We demand an end to taxpayer bailouts without solutions for working-class America; policies that address the problem of too big to fail; reorganization so that the financial elite who managed us into this crisis are not in charge as we try to fix it, and we believe banks should be broken up—decentralized—and sold back to the private market with strong new regulatory and antitrust rules in place.

NATIONALIZE: Experts agree -- Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention - no more taxpayer handouts.

REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused.

DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place-- new banks, managed by new people.