4|2|2011
US Uncut NY action on 3|26|2011
Picture © Kate Ann [flickr link to her full set]
At the NY action at Bank of America Chris and I raised issues of debtors' justice, the decline in corporate tax rates from the end of World War II to the present, and why it makes sense to discuss collective bargaining rights for debtors. These were also the key ideas engaged at our Left Forum panel on 3/19/2011.
3|29|2011
Glen Beck Targets Stephen Lerner While Shilling for Real "Economic Terrorists" on Wall Street
Following his recent Left Forum appearances, union organizer Stephen Lerner has become the latest target of right-wing ideologue Glen Beck, who charges Lerner with "economic terrorism." Apparently, Lerner's objection to the financial sector's massive bailout, quick recovery and rebounding executive compensation, which has left ordinary Americans in increasingly worse shape, is the outrage currently fueling Beck's most recent budget-deficit diatribes.
The Washington Post's Ezra Klein, who writes what he calls an "opinionated blog on economic policy, collapsing banks, cap and trade, and health care reform," wrote a thoughtful post called, "Steve Lerner's plan" in which, as Klein puts it, "The Blaze attended a conference of lefties where Lerner presented his big idea: Like a lot of people, he feels the financial system got off too easy in the crisis. They created the mess, but unlike the millions of foreclosed homeowners and newly unemployed workers, they’ve come out mostly unscathed."
Inequality has increased in the US, following the 2008-09 financial crisis, but both mainstream and right-wing media either fail to acknowledge or outright obscure key facts that people need to know about the crisis:
- The financial sector in the US lost profitability for only one quarter
- After-tax profits for the US corporate sector as a whole are higher than they were before the crisis
- The wider social costs of the US/UK/European financial crisis, which led to a global economic crisis, are much greater than the cost to the financial sector itself, and are still growing, not only in the US, but markedly so in much of the developing world
- Despite the financial reform bill, we're far from safe from further financial turbulence
Multinational capitols based in the US are now better off than before, and they see this as the perfect opportunity to wage political campaigns to bust remaining unions and lower US wages. People struggling with mortgages and student loans are being paid back with slashed budgets for essential government services that threaten access to health care, education and modern infrastructure at a time when 25% of US mortgages are in foreclosure and people's savings and pensions have been decimated. This debt is odious: compounding it with austerity is class war.
What Stephen Lerner points out—and this is nicely related in Klein's Washington Post blog—is that there is a "point of leverage" at which endebted workers, homeowners and students can exert their power and demand that the financial system negotiate. “What does the other side fear most?” says Lerner.
“They fear disruption, they fear uncertainty. Every article about Europe says a riot in Greece, the markets went down. The folks that control this country care about one thing: how the stock market does; how the bond market does; and what their bonus is. So I think we weed out a very simple strategy: how do we bring down the stock market, how do we bring down their bonuses, how do we interfere with their ability to, to be rich."
Recently, economists who exert great influence over US policiy on matters like executive compensation—like Professor René Stulz of Ohio State's Dice Center for Financial Economics and the "Squam Lake Group"—argue that we are framing the debate wrong if we blame high executive compensation for adding unnecessary risk to the financial sector. The problem, according to him and others, is an economy that needs to be made more lean in order to cope with the "economic tsunamis" that should be expected in a 21st Century financial system.
By this way of thinking, we are headed for an economic future in which rich individuals and rich creditor nations seek the greater profits and financial returns that come with high-risk/high-speed transactions and a bloated financial sector. Too bad for ordinary people and the most vulnerable. The message to them is: you're on your own for the next financial tsunami.
Since that's how Wall Street and their allies think, they're threatened by a proposal to organize the victims of their odious debt. The idea that people would band together and fight to remain in their homes by insisting that banks engage in collective bargaining to reduce the price of interest on their loans—this is the outrage to the financial sector, even though their interest rate remains near zero. The real outrage is that they assume we must accept a global economic system that produces these socially destructive "tsunamis"!
Stephen Lerner is no economic terrorist—he's simply aware of the magnitude of what is going on, and the fact that our response thus far has been insufficient to fight these attacks on our well-being.
Its time for us all to speak to our neighbors and more broadly in our communities and workplaces about what's really going on, like he's been doing, and what we can do about it. Lets talk with our friends and colleagues about why its in the interest of each one of us to assert our right to organize and act collectively in all the areas that affect our lives.
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