The Tragic Absurdity of In Debt We Trust:

Bill Stills, creator of the film, The Money Masters, which tries to answser the question, "why are Americans going broke and the American middle class rapidly disappearing, by going back and tracing the history of modern banking which began over 300 years ago (with the founding of the privately-owned Bank of England).

In his new film "The Secrets of Oz", Stills elucidates the powerful symbols of monetary reform which were the core of the Populist movement and the 1896 and 1900 presidental bids of Populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan in L. Frank Baum's, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Through fascinating metaphors, historical allusions, solutions are revealed.

The Secrets of Oz

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Deleveraging the Monster Bubble

From Econotwist's blog:

How long will the deleveraging process take? How painful? Will it create the conditions for growth, and if so, what kind of growth?  Will we seek and find light at the end of this dark tunnel?  Or will we let it get progressively darker to the point where seeking becomes damned near impossible?

The point of the chart above is to emphasize the enormous growth of leverage within the global financial system (individuals, corporations, banks, and governments) over time and the "deleveraging of the greatest economic/finance bubble in history" according to Christopher Laird:

Once the level of leverage reached 60 to 1, it becomes impossible to stay ahead of the deleveraging, even for central banks. The implications are staggering. Every major economy in the world is involved. The outcomes of deleveraging this monster bubble, represented by the green oval, will be what I term Credit Crisis II. At 60 to 1 leverage, a loss of 1 to 2% wipes out the capital.

It is in crisis that the seeds of opportunity are supposed to take root. However, instead, it appears all the seeds of opportunity planted themselves in and around the Big Six.

"Fifteen years ago, the assets of the six largest banks in this country totaled 17 percent of GDP ... The assets of the six largest banks in the United States today total 63 percent of GDP." -- Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio quoted from Simon Johnson's book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown

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Do We Need a Constitutional Convention to Drive Big Money Off Capital Hill?.

Let's face it, reform and change will not come through the current big-business-dominated electoral system which serves to stifles all voices but that of the ruling class. A list of poll findings [appended to the text of Paul Street's book, Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics] suggest American citizens, on the whole, do not share the imperialist views of what Paul Street calls the “political and policy-making class” or the “Narrow-Spectrum Two-Party Money-Media Single-Member-Plurality-System-Winner-Take-All-Strong-Executive-Imperial Plutocracy”.

“Twice as many Americans back more government services and spending (even if this means a tax increase) as the number who support fewer services and reduced spending.”

“69 percent of Americans think it is the responsibility of the federal government to provide health care to all US citizens.”

“59 percent of Americans in 2004 thought the US should remove its military presence from the Middle East if that’s what the majority of the people there want.”

“93 percent of Americans support minimum standards in international trade agreements for working conditions and 91 percent support minimum environmental protection.

Our two-party system has been reduced to what political scientist Sheldon Wolin calls "a one-and-a-half party system" where,

"the parties set out to mobilize the citizen-as-voter, to define political obligation as fulfilled by the casting of a vote. Afterwards, post-election politics of lobbying, repaying donors, and promoting corporate interests - the real players - takes over The effect is to demobilize the citizenry, to teach them not to be involved or to ponder matters that are either settled or beyond their efficacy....The timidity of a Democratic Party mesmerized by centrist precepts,...points to the crucial fact that, for the poor, minorities, the working-class, anticorporatists, pro-environmentalists, and anti-imperialists, there is no opposition party working actively on their behalf." (Wolin, Democracy Incorporated, pp. 201, 205, 206).

Even the slightest, superficial distinctions that still exist between the one-and-a-half party system can mean the difference between life and death for the most vulnerable part of our population, living on, as Street says, “the wrong side of American hierarchy and policy”.

However, all is not lost. Pressure from a mobilized and organized populace has great potential to restore our democracy.

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Healthcare Insurance, Baseball and Antitrust Laws.

The insurance industry has everything to lose from real health care reform, that is, reforming the health care industry to serve we, the people, in the most efficient and effective way. The reason is obvious: profit. The better our health care system facilitates and benefits the health of we, the people, the less the insurance industry gains.

Americans United for Change, a grassroots organization working to return America to the "traditional progressive values that have defined America – economic fairness, opportunity, national and economic security and democratic leadership" released a TV ad airing on cable stations in Washington, D.C. noting that Major League Baseball (MLB) and health insurance companies are two of the few organizations exempted from antitrust laws.

"When baseball players fix the games, they get in trouble. When health insurance executives fix the game, they get … rich."

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