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Banned
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Obama's Rhetoric VS What Was Said to Our Great-Grandparents to Attract Their Votes..
What has changed since Woodrow Wilson said this, just the year before he was elected president as the democratic party candidate?:
Quote:
http://library.louisville.edu/law/brandeis/opm-ch1.html
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
By Louis D. Brandeis
CHAPTER I: OUR FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY
President Wilson, when Governor, declared in 1911:
"The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly. So long as that exists, our old variety and freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men, who, even if their actions be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who, necessarily, by every reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. This is the greatest question of all; and to this, statesmen must address themselves with an earnest determination to serve the long future and the true liberties of men."
The Pujo Committee—appointed in 1912—found:
"Far more dangerous than all that has happened to us in the past in the way of elimination of competition in industry is the control of credit through the domination of these groups over our banks and industries."...
"Whether under a different currency system the resources in our banks would be greater or less is comparatively immaterial if they continue to be controlled by a small group."....
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Have we veered away from the sentiments and concerns of our great grandparents, and grand parents....why?
This was the reaction to high oil prices, just a generation ago:
The other day, responding to this:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...02#post2464402
Quote:
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Originally Posted by roachboy
....i would like to see the next president and next congress connect the dots--the bush administration as an expression of the logic of adaptation particular to the dying national-security state as bureaucratic apparatus and as patronage network--and move to drastically cut it back--....
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(It made me wonder....later...where are Obama's sentiments, and those like the 45 senators who nearly came up with the votes to beat back the corporate/republican alliance, in circumstances so similar to those that exist today?
Quote:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...id=chix-sphere
Monday, Jun. 28, 1976
Raising the Chopping Block
Huge, rich and efficient, the U.S. oil industry has long occupied an ambiguous place in American life. Its dazzling feats of technology in supplying the nation's voracious demand for energy have helped the U.S. to become the most advanced country on earth. Yet many Americans have come to view the industry with suspicion, especially since the rapid runup in oil prices that followed the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Critics contend that the major companies' total control of all aspects of their business, from wellhead to gas pump, has given the industry too much power to manipulate supplies and prices and reap excessive profits at the expense of consumers. During the past year or so, the efforts of congressional Democrats to curb the companies' clout and inject more competition into the industry has gained increasing support. Last week, in the most far-reaching move yet, the Senate Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 8 to 7, sent to the full Senate a bill requiring the breakup of the 18 largest oil corporations.*...
..... Though refining firms would be permitted to keep their service stations and other marketing facilities, they could not buy more. Companies that decided to become either producers or refiner-marketers would have to spin off their pipelines. To handle the lawsuits that would arise from the sale of some operations and the establishment of new companies, a Temporary Petroleum Industry Divestiture Court would be established with powers equal to those of a federal district court.
The bill faces formidable legislative hurdles. Indeed, three Senators who voted to send the measure to the floor, Democratic Whip Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania and Republican Charles Mathias of Maryland, are avowed opponents of divestiture. They merely wanted to bring the issue up for a full-scale debate in the Senate, which last October rejected a similar proposal by a surprisingly close vote of 54 to 45. The bill's fate is also uncertain in the House, which has not yet even held committee hearings on the matter.
If legislation passes both houses, it faces a veto from President Ford, who opposes the bill. Jimmy Carter, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate, has also come out against a thoroughgoing breakup of major oil firms−though whether as President he would thumb down such a proposal is open to question. On the other hand, Carter would favor getting the oil companies out of other energy fields, such as coal, uranium and solar power.
Supporters of the Bayh bill, which include labor unions and consumer and environmental groups, argue that putting the giant firms on the chopping block would open the market to greater competition, end price discrimination by the majors against independent marketers and ultimately result in cheaper petroleum products. More important, they insist that splitting up the industry would stiffen its approach to oil-producing countries, which have quintupled the price of crude in recent years. A fully integrated company, the critics say, has a vested interest in playing ball with the producers, while a marketing and refining firm without producing interests would haggle more vigorously for lower prices.....
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....)
I put the following together, in part of my response to roachboy:
....Wouldn't that require electing candidates who stood for proposals like the following one, 32 years ago, from Birch Byah, instead of the choices we have to vote for now? McCain is same old, same old, and Obama is a "uniter". Don't we really need someone to represent the great numbers of us who are against the hidden concentration of wealth and power that wants to remain hidden, is using Obama as a means to remain unaccountable, uninvestigated?
Quote:
http://www.4president.org/brochures/...76brochure.htm
Birch Bayh for President 1976 Campaign Brochure
...Our economy is at a crucial turning point. The problems of skyrocketing energy and food costs and the inability of the free market to function effectively have led me to conclude that recent policy failures are the result of an outdated view of the American economy. Therefore, I am proposing the establishment of a Temporary National Economic Committee -- similar to the Committee established by President Roosevelt in 1938 -- to publicly investigate the concentration of economic power in America today....
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...764913,00.html
Thirteen Families
Monday, Oct. 28, 1940
...He wrote an erudite bombshell of questionable accuracy titled America's 60 Families, watched his subjects squirm while Secretary Ickes and then Assistant Attorney General Jackson quoted it with gusto. Within less than a year the families were sprawled under more powerful microscopes as the Temporary National Economic Committee made a study of corporate practices and controls....
...Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission published its report to null a 121-page study of "The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Non-Financial* Corporations." Based on 1937 figures, it whittled the Lundberg roster to 13 families, was considerably less personal than his census of Du Pont bathrooms, considerably more dogged in tracking down actual shareholdings (Lundberg had estimated fortunes by 1924 tax returns). It found:
» Of an estimated 8,500,000 U. S. stockholders, less than 75,000 (.06% of the population) own fully one-half of all corporate stock held by individuals. The majority of the voting power in the average large corporation is in the hands of not much over 1% of the shareholders. But some of the biggest and best-known corporations are exceptions (i.e., widely held, without visible centralized control): A. T. & T., Anaconda, Bethlehem Steel, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Goodyear, R. C. A., U. S. Steel, Pennsylvania Railroad, etc....
....» The 13 most potent family groups' holdings were worth $2,700,000,000, comprised over 8% of the stock of the 200 corporations: Fords, $624,975,000; Du Fonts, $573,690,000; Rockefellers, $396,583,000; Mellons, $390,943,000; McCormicks (International Harvester), $111,102,000; Hartfords (A. & P.), $105,702,000; Harknesses (Standard Oil), $104,891,000; Dukes (tobacco, power), $89,459,000; Pews (Sun Oil), $75,628,000; Pitcairns (Pittsburgh Plate Glass), $65,576,000; Clarks (Singer), $57,215,000; Reynolds (tobacco), $54,766,000; Kresses (S. H. Kress), $50,044,000.
» Three groups—Du Fonts, Mellons, Rockefellers—have shareholdings valued at nearly $1,400,000,000, control, directly or indirectly, 15 of the 200 corporations.
To this day....67 years later....the SEC records are still sealed:
http://www.archives.gov/research/gui...roups/144.html
Records of the Temporary National Economic Committee [TNEC]
Search ARC for Entries from this Record Group
(Record Group 144)
1938-41
645 cu. ft.
Overview of Records Locations
Table of Contents
* 144.1 ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY
* 144.2 RECORDS OF THE COMMITTEE 1938-41 967 lin. ft.
144.1 ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY
Established: As a joint Congressional-Executive branch committee, composed of members of both houses of Congress and representatives of several Executive departments and commissions, by joint resolution of Congress, June 16, 1938 (52 Stat. 705). Functions: Studied monopoly and concentration of economic power, and made recommendations for legislation.
Abolished: April 3, 1941, by expiration of extension granted by joint resolution, December 16, 1940 (54 Stat. 1225). Liquidation deadline of December 31, 1941, set by Additional Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act of 1941, May 24, 1941 (55 Stat. 200).
144.2 RECORDS OF THE COMMITTEE
1938-41
967 lin. ft.
Textual Records: General records, 1938-41. Preliminary and final reports, 1938-41. Records relating to committee hearings, 1938- 40. Records relating to special studies and published monographs, 1938-41. Industrial problems information file ("Industry File"), 1938-41. Questionnaires, 1938-39. Personnel and accounting records, 1938-41. Records of investigations and special studies of insurance, investment banking, and corporate practices by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 1938-41. Records of hearings and special studies by the Departments of the Treasury, Justice, and Labor, 1938-41.
Specific Restrictions: As specified by the SEC, no one, except government officials for official purposes, may have access to records created and filed by the SEC on behalf of the TNEC, except for the following: certain records relating to the insurance study, consisting of replies to formal questionnaires (but not including replies to questionnaires sent to state supervisory officials and replies to the questionnaire of February 9, 1940, to life insurance agents); exhibits, including rate books and form insurance policies; and all conventional-form annual statements....
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Isn't "#2" in Nader's six years old piece....an indictment of the Bear Stearns bailout?
Quote:
http://www.nader.org/index.php?/arch...Socialism.html
Thursday, July 18. 2002
Posted by Ralph Nader
Corporate Socialism
The relentless expansion of corporate control over our political economy has proven nearly immune to daily reporting by the mainstream media. Corporate crime, fraud and abuse have become like the weather; everyone is talking about the storm but no one seems able to do anything about it. This is largely because expected accountability mechanisms -- including boards of directors, outside accounting and law firms, bankers and brokers, state and federal regulatory agencies and legislatures -- are inert or complicit.
When, year after year, the established corporate watchdogs receive their profits or compensation directly or indirectly from the companies they are supposed to be watching, independent judgment fails, corruption increases and conflicts of interest grow among major CEOs and their cliques. Over time, these institutions, unwilling to reform themselves, strive to transfer the costs of their misdeeds and recklessness onto the larger citizenry. In so doing, big business is in the process of destroying the very capitalism that has provided it with a formidable ideological cover.
Consider the following assumptions of a capitalistic system:
1) Owners are supposed to control what they own. For a century, big business has split ownership (shareholders) from control, which is in the hands of the officers of the corporation and its rubber-stamp board of directors. Investors have been disenfranchised and told to sell their shares if they don't like the way management is running their business. Nowadays, with crooked accounting, inflated profits and self-dealing, it has proven difficult for even large investors to know the truth about their officious managers.
2) Under capitalism, businesses are supposed to sink or swim, which is still very true for small business. But larger industries and companies often have become "too big to fail" and demand that Uncle Sam serve as their all-purpose protector, providing a variety of public guarantees and emergency bailouts. Yes, some wildly looted companies that are expendable, such as Enron, cannot avail themselves of governmental salvation and do go bankrupt or are bought. By and large, however, in industry after industry where two or three companies dominate or presage a domino effect, Washington becomes their backstop.
3) Capitalism is supposed to exhibit a consensual freedom of contract -- a distinct advance over a feudal society. Yet the great majority of contracts for credit, insurance, software, housing, health, employment, products, repairs and other services are standard-form, printed contracts, presented on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Going across the proverbial street to a competitor gets you the same contract. Every decade, these "contracts of adhesion," as the lawyers call them, become more intrusive and more insistent on taking away the buyers' constitutional rights to access to courts in favor of binding arbitration or stipulate outright surrender of basic rights and remedies. The courts are of little help in invalidating these impositions by what are essentially private corporate legislatures regulating millions of Americans.
4) Capitalism requires a framework of law and order: The rules of the economic game are to be conceived and enforced on the merits against mayhem, fraud, deception and predatory practices. Easily the most powerful influence over most government departments and agencies are the industries that receive the privileges and immunities, regulatory passes, exemptions, deductions and varied escapes from responsibility that regularly fill the business pages. Only those caught in positions of extreme dereliction ever have reason to expect more than a slap on the wrist for violating legal mandates.
5) Capitalist enterprises are expected to compete on an even playing field. Corporate lobbyists, starting with their abundant cash for political campaigns, have developed a "corporate state" where government lavishes subsidies, inflated contracts, guarantees and research and development and natural resources giveaways on big business -- while denying comparable benefits to individuals and family businesses. We have a government of big business, by big business and for big business, even if more of these businesses are nominally moving their state charters to Bermuda-like tax escapes.
"Corporate socialism" -- the privatization of profit and the socialization of risks and misconduct -- is displacing capitalist canons. This condition prevents an adaptable capitalism, served by equal justice under law, from delivering higher standards of living and enlarging its absorptive capacity for broader community and environmental values. Civic and political movements must call for a decent separation of corporation and state.
In 1938, in the midst of the Great Depression, Congress created the Temporary National Economic Committee to hold hearings around the country, recommend ways to deal with the concentration of economic power and promote a more just economy. World War II stopped this corporate reform momentum. We should not have to wait for a further deterioration from today's gross inequalities of wealth and income to launch a similar commission on the rampant corporatization of our country. At stake is whether civic values of our democratic society will prevail over invasive commercial values.
Originally published in The Washington Post, July 18, 2002.
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Are we "sheeple", today? We used to exert our political power to successfully pressure congress to investigate the concentration of wealth and power in this country, at least every 20 years, in the first half of the 20th century. As recently as in 1976...there was still "tough talk", and 45 senate votes to accompany an attempt to take on "big oil".
In 1976, one presidential candidate, Birch Bayh, at least published a pamphlet calling for a renewed "Temporary National Economic Committee" investigation of monopoly and concentration of wealth and corporate control in the US.
By 2002....only Ralph Nader was still talking about....I had never even heard of the "monopoly investigations" of the 1937 "TNEC", until last year. It's records of it's 1937 to 1940 investigations of the wealthy are still sealed today.....why?
Why are we so complacent today....what has changed? Who influenced the change the most, was it the Reagan era? Will the demanding political nature of our recent ancestors, reflected in the actions and positions of those who they voted to send to congress and the white house, resurge as economic conditions worsen?
Has Obama said nearly enough, compared to Wilson and Roosevelt, and if he hasn't.....the comparisons show the economic conditions to justify speaking similar to Wilson and Roosevelt, but Obama has not...... what would influence Obama to suddenly talk openly and aggressively against the concentration of wealth and power that still persists, still divides, still acts as a negative force on "our way of life", and expecially on keeping a lid on actual, "beneficial to the masses", political discourse?
Here is Roosevelt, during his first campaign for the presidency, in 1932:
Quote:
http://www.peterkang.com/about_pk/ac...ar%20paper.pdf
Brandeis and Wall Street:
The Crafting of the Securities Act of 1933
Page 3
During the summer of 1932, Roosevelt made it clear in a campaign speech given
in Columbus, Ohio, that the regulation of securities and the ways in which the investment
banking community conducted business would be central to the Democratic platform. He
proposed that “every effort be made to prevent the issue of manufactured and
unnecessary securities” and also proposed that “with respect to legitimate securities the
sellers shall tell the uses to which the money is to be put.”
This truth telling requires that definite and accurate statements be made to the buyers in
respect to the bonuses and commissions the sellers are to receive; and, furthermore, true
information as to the investment of principal, as to the true earnings, true liabilities and
true assets of the corporation itself.
3
It was clear that financial regulation would become a central part of the New
Deal. The tarnished reputation of investment bankers and growing concerns about the
economy’s inability to recover made it a political necessity to target Wall Street.
Page 4
The publication of Other People’s Money in 1914 came as a result of the findings
of the Pujo committee hearings in 1912. The hearings were called by Congressman
Charles Lindbergh of Minnesota (father of the famed aviator) and named after Arsene
Pujo, a Democratic Congressman from Louisiana. The Pujo committee charged J.P.
Morgan, National City, First National and three smaller banks of using interlocking
directorships to exert control over the supply of money and the way it was used. The
term “money trust” was used to label these powerful banks, and the perception that a
handful of banks controlled over $22 billion of resources (“three times the assessed value
of all the real estate in the City of New York”)
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made the image of Wall Street bankers all
the more threatening.
For Louis Brandeis, such a “combination – the intertwining of interests” on the
part of the bankers was unacceptable and harmful to both companies and consumers. He
purposed “publicity” as the solution: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants;
electric light the most efficient policeman.”
7
Brandeis advocated the mandatory
disclosure of commissions or profits by bankers when issuing securities. One of the
major reasons for disclosure was for the benefit of the investor, who, judging from the
size of the commission, would know how invested the banker was in the security (“the
higher commission for underwriting weaker security”)
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and subsequently, have the ability
to judge whether or not an investment was a sound one.
While the sensational effect of the Pujo committee hearings and the Progressive
pitch of Brandeis’s publication aroused public opposition to Wall Street bankers, the
Wilson administration hesitated to take action because of its cooperative relationship with
bankers on ventures that included the domestic economic crisis in the cotton market and
loans to European nations prior to World War I. Several states, meanwhile, enacted
“blue-sky laws” that prohibited the sales of certain securities without a license, but, as
mentioned earlier, the IBA pooled its resources to keep New York free of such laws and
encouraged bankers to evade state regulation by conducting their business through mail
in more lax states. Drastic reform in the Brandeisian spirit would have to wait.
The crash of 1929 and growing concerns about a long-term depression prompted
political action. Hoover, convinced that short-selling on the stock exchange was hurting
the market, expressed a degree of paranoia as he charged Democratic financiers such as
Page 9
Bernard Baruch of conspiring with European bankers to engineer a bear raid to keep the
market from recovering. By late February of 1932, Hoover called on Congress to
investigate the stock exchange. The Senate Banking and Currency Committee, which
probed the practices on the stock exchanges, would oversee two years of intermittent
testimony from Wall Street’s elite. However, it was not until January 1933, when
Ferdinand Pecora, a lawyer who had experience with Wall Street while serving as Chief
Assistant District Attorney in New York City, was appointed that the committee hearings
intensified and rose to the national spotlight.
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The Pecora hearings, as the Senate investigations would later be called, was, in
many ways, a repeat of the Pujo committee hearings of 1912. The belief that a “money
trust” existed and that it controlled numerous corporations was still intact. However, the
uncovering of irresponsible and reckless abuses by investment banks became the central
role of the Pecora hearings. Among the worst offenders were the commercial banks and
their affiliates.
Page 18
In 1914, Louis Brandeis regarded the House of Morgan as the most dangerous
organization in the United States. By 1933, J.P. Morgan & Co. had opted to leave the
investment banking business. In its place, however, Morgan Stanley & Co. emerged as a
dominant investment bank. In the first six years of its existence, Morgan Stanley
managed almost $3 billion in securities, more than J.P. Morgan’s total between the years
1925-1930.
37
Louis Brandeis was indeed an influential figure in the shaping of securities
legislation. The Securities Act of 1933 bore the Brandeisian imprint of discouraging
“bigness” by negating the advantages of an integrated bank....
....While the three companies that Brandeis had mentioned in 1912 – J.P. Morgan,
National City, and First National – no longer occupied the top three spots of investment
banking, the notion that a “money trust” still existed remained strong in the minds of
antimonopoly advocates in the 1930s. The idea that a handful of banks controlled the
flow of capital in America was still very strong; many felt that the New Deal legislation
had done nothing to curb the growth of investment banks. In 1938, amid a great push by
Page 19
the antimonopoly faction of the New Deal, the Temporary National Economic Committee
(TNEC) was created to investigate monopolistic practices across various industries,
including investment banking.
38
The decision to investigate Wall Street once again
confirmed two things: (1) the New Deal securities legislation had helped to restore the
dominance of a handful of banks that had suffered through competition during the 1920s
and (2) the fear of a “money trust” in the similar vein of the Pujo committee and Pecora
investigations persisted.
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Geisst, Wall Street: A History, 258.
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Where is Obama....where are we?
Last edited by host; 06-14-2008 at 09:50 AM..
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