Fighting the Big Banks

Last time I pointed out that money from the stimulus will be going not to US workers, but to workers in emerging economies abroad. This won’t just happen because wealthy individuals individuals use their tax-cut extension funds to buy investments in companies who do business in emerging countries. t will happen because big banks themselves are rapidly moving into emerging economies to make a killing overseas.

In order to compete with each other, large investment “bank chiefs say they will… overhaul their trading operations, change geographical mix towards emerging markets, and reduce pay and staff levels.”  (“A sparser future” Financial Times, 12/20/10 p 9)

Does this seem to you like a hopeful sign for the U.S. economy?

The Wisdom of Star Trek

There’s a Next Gen Star Trek show set on a planet run by women who treat men as near-slaves. When Commander Riker of earth’s ship, The Enterprise, convinces the leader of the woman’s planet to spare the lives of two rebels (a man and woman who want equality between men and women), the leader finally assents.

Surprised by planet’s leader’s concession, Riker asks why she chooses to send the rebels into exile instead of death. The leader replies she sees she can’t stop progress from coming. Eventually there would be more equality of the sexes on her planet. “But,” she adds, “we can slow it down.”

I believe we will someday have global economic equality, and that will be a good thing for humanity. But right now, global economic equality is happening at the expense of those in the middle class and below it in developed economies including own United States.

I think we should try to slow that progress down. We ought to stop, look, and think about where we are going and how.

Britons have been brainwashed by German pressure into thinking that living frugally is a good thing for the middle classes to do right now. I don’t think so. Not if we wind up paying the bill for investment banks to become even richer off the backs of both the people of emerging nations, taxpayers of developed countries, and the banks’ own clients whom they’ve’ royally betrayed.

This is why I think it’s time for all Americans, even the wealthy, to boycott Wall Street and its investments in emerging countries.

Copyright © 2010 Nancy K. Humphreys