[Peace-discuss] let the rich bail out the rich - Bernie Sanders interview

[Ricky Baldwin]

In which Bernie has good things to say on the bailout, on Obama and the urgently needed grassroots movement for different priorities ... -RB


Interview
With Senator Bernie Sanders on The Bailout
by Rob Kall     www.opednews.com

Thanks for the invaluable
volunteer help ofJay  Farrington in
transcribing the interview. 

Kall: So, I'm
so glad you could be with us speaking to the Philadelphia area. You're really doing a
great job standing up in this conversation and I figure I'm let you talk to the
audience and tell them what you want to—make sure you get after them, and then we
can have a conversation if there's some time after that.

Sanders: Sure, well, my
main concern is that, since President Bush has been in office, what we have
seen is a significant decline in the standard of living of the middle class;
people's median income's gone down; Six million have slipped out of the middle
class and into poverty; seven million people have lost their health insurance;
the gap between the very rich and everybody else has gone wild;

Meanwhile, while the
middleclass is slipping, the people on top have done extraordinarily well: you
have the incredible reality that the top 400 individuals in this country have
seen a 670 Billion dollar, that's a B, Billion dollar increase in their wealth
since Bush has been president. So when I look at this proposed bailout, the
first question that comes to my mind is, "Who's going to pay for this
thing? 

Given the disastrous
impact that Bush's policies have had on the middle class, why should it be the
middle class that really has to bail out the excesses of Wall Street, when
those guys have done very, very well. 
So, my main concern right
now is to make sure that this bailout is paid for by those people who have
benefited out of Bush's policies. There is the top .01%, who now earn more in
income, by the way, than the bottom 50% so, that's my first concern.

My second concern is if
we go forward in this proposal, that we make certain that the assets purchased
for banks are realistically discounted; in other words, taxpayers of the
country don't pay more for assets than they should and I also want to make sure
that when taxpayers put money into an asset that in fact, we end up receiving
equity stakes in the bailed out companies. If we're going to put up the money
we need to own a percentage of those companies. 

The other concerns that I
have, Rob, are that we have to understand how we got into this precipitous,
this very dangerous situation and that has a lot to do with the deregulation
that we have seen for the last many years. 
I voted while I was in
the House (I was on the Banking Committee there) against the Gramm Leach
Blithely legislation, which took down the firewalls that had been established
since the Great Depression and I think that is one of the precipitating factors
that leads us to where we are today. 

Also, when we see the
tremendous volatility in oil prices, we understand, I believe, anyhow, that
there is a great deal of speculation going on there as well. So, what we need
to do is do sensible re-regulation; I think we have, if we've learned anything
in this crisis, it is that we cannot trust these major financial institutions
to do the right thing in terms of protecting consumers. Nor will people who are
purchasing oil futures show any concern for people who have to pay $3.70 for a
gallon of gas.

So I think the function
of government is in fact to protect consumers, protect workers. We have let
those principles slide very significantly in recent years on these right wing
economic principles which include not only deregulation, but tax breaks for billionaires
under the great "trickle down" theory that somehow we all benefit
when billionaires get tax breaks and also unfettered free trade—somehow it's
going to work wonders for the middle class while we allow companies to throw
America workers out on the street, move to China and then bring their products
back tariff free  so that's an important part of what I want to see done;
I think sensible re-regulation is important and the other thing; a couple of
other things that are important to me.  

This is not being talked
about is the reason we are where we are today is because you have institutions
that are too big to fail, and they have to be bailed out because if they fail,
they're going to take down a significant part of the economy with them. I
believe, and it seems to me pretty commonsensical, that if an institution is
too big to fail, then it is too big to exist.

Kall: Boy, do
I agree with that…

Sanders:  But you're
not hearing much discussion; let me give you an example and then I'll give it
all over to you; right now, which is in the last few weeks, Bank of America
which is the nation's largest depository institution has taken over Country
Wide, which is the nation's largest mortgage lender and they've absorbed
Merrill Lynch, the nation's largest brokerage house. Now you tell me what
happens in five years if Bank of America teeters, do you have a doubt for a
second that they're going to have to be bailed out? 

Kall: 
Absolutely, that's what's going to happen; in your petition (here)you say not only that they're too big to
exist, but we need to determine which companies fall into this category and
then break them up? 

Sanders: Right.

Kall: 
Wow!

Sanders: Does that seem
so radical?

Kall: It
sounds wonderfully radical. How do we do it?

Sanders: Well, hopefully
we do it by electing a new president; hopefully we do it by developing a strong
grass roots movement in this country which demands that a new president and Democratic
leadership in the house and the senate move forward in a progressive manner.

But I think especially
after the experiences of the last couple of weeks, if people don't understand
that we've got to break up some of these huge companies which are too big to
fail, if we don't under stand it now, we're never going to understand it; this
economy has so many structural problems, but increased monopolization of
industry after r industry fewer and fewer companies owning and controlling one
segment of our society after another I mean this is something that we just have
to take a look at.

Kall: I've
tried to pull back a little and look at this. What Paulson says, and what
panicked Paulson and the leaders in the senate was that there was a drying up
of liquidity—of availability of money to be loaned for whatever use for last
week.

Sanders: Yes.

Kall: 
And that's what set off the panic. It wasn't that certain companies were going
out of business; it was the liquidity and the availability of loans.

Sanders: well, their
argument, for better or worse was that if companies can't get their credit,
there is a danger that companies will fold.

Kall: Yeah,
but the solution doesn't have to b e to protect these loser companies that have
failed basically that have gambled away and have gone into extensive risk. That
was not successful. The answer was to maintain liquidity by whatever means.
Right?

Sanders:  Yep

Kall: So, what
I don't understand is—I was talking to my bank; they're doing very well. It's a
local bank; it's a decent sized bank. They say that the way they did it was
they didn't get involved in a lot of the loans that a lot of the others got
involved with.

Sanders: That's right

Kall: It's
almost like they're being punished. "You didn't get involved, so you don't
get a piece of the pie." Why are we rewarding the ones that did?

Sanders: Well, that's
obviously a hotly debated question here. And that gets to executive
compensation as well. But it is very clear that this crisis has been caused by
a deregulation, which means that trillions of dollars of financial transactions
are now taking place in an unregulated area, and frankly, nobody knows what the
hell is going on. 

What we do know is that
it’s the result of the sub prime mortgage crisis; one large inst after another
is--we have seen a number of them folding already and others are in danger of
folding so the issue now is, according to Bernake and according to Paulson, if
the congress does not act in the very near future, very short term, they
worry very much about a financial meltdown. 

Now, the difficulty that
many people have--in congress, most members of Congress and Senators are not
PhD economists. And many of these new financial instruments, these "credit
swaps" and so forth and so on, are enormously complicated; I mean,
I was listening to Paulson today; we just had a meeting with him a few hours
ago, he was saying, you know somebody was talking about the government taking a
look at that, and he was saying, "You know, hey, there are very few people
that understand this; you're not going to find this in the government. But your
point about these people using deregulation to engage in incredibly risky
behavior so that they can make wild and excessive short term profits then
endangering the entire system; that is exactly right, and they cannot be
rewarded.

I think we have to take a
hard look at how we got to where we are today. I mean, it is interesting that
your local bank, which makes loans to people they know; they know whether these
people can repay the loans, they know the small businesses. They're doing just
fine, and I think, by the way, that's the case with the state of Vermont as well. But
when you have these huge companies, you have people selling loans and
absolutely irresponsibly, making money, fully understanding that in a few years
people are not going to be able to repay these loans, and they don't take
responsibility for it; they just pass it on to somebody else, who passes it on
to somebody else, and it ends up in Japan or God knows where; you got a real problem
with that type of system.

Kall: The
second half of the hour I have David Korten on. He wrote the Post
Corporate World; Life After Capitalism. Are you familiar with his writing
at all?

Sanders: I've heard the
title, but honestly I haven't read it.

Kall:
Basically, what he's saying is all the complicated derivatives that make money
on money we've got to get rid of them, too. We've got to get back to Main Street, where
people make money making products and services. That's where we should be
taking care of business and not with all these "theoretical"
constructs.

Sanders: That makes a lot
of sense, I mean look at what's happened, right now; you’ve seen a tremendous
increase in financial institutions in the amount of money they play with at the
same time as we're seeing the loss of millions of good paying manufacturing
jobs we make less and less in America and we're importing almost everything we
use from another country; I think you don't have to be a PhD in economics to
understand that there's something a little but weird that we're not making real
products that our people are consuming and that we're losing family farms and
so much of our wealth is tied up in these very exotic and complicated financial
transactions that are taking plac3 under the radar screen, without
transparency.

Just the other day on
another issue, not unrelated but a separate issue, is the price of oil went
soaring; there's been a big debate in congress as to why the price of oil is as
high as it is, why people pay $3.70 for a gallon of gas. The conservatives and
the Republicans say it is all supply and demand, But when you see these wild
fluctuations that take place in a day. That has nothing to do with supply and
demand that has to do with money being pumped in to oil futures and a
significant amount of those transactions take place also away from the public
eye; they are not transparent we don't know who controls what, we do know that
in recent years, whether it was Enron capturing electricity distribution on the
west coast; whether it's BP, who put a corner on propane and Amarand, a hedge
fund, putting a corner on natural gas. In all three of those markets:
electricity on the west coast, natural gas and propane, there was significant
price manipulation. 

Kall: What
about-- just recently they put a freeze for a couple of days on "short
selling". Why can't they do that on speculation in oil?

Sanders: I don't know the
answer to that; what I can tell you is that some of us have worked very hard to
pass legislation that would do away with the Enron loophole which would allow
transparency, where today things are operating underneath the radar screen and
there's a lot more that has to be done--

Kall: Who's
blocking it?

Sanders: Well, obviously
the energy companies, the oil companies have enormous power the Republicans are
not interested in (unintell); they rather "drill baby, drill,"
although that won't lower the price of gas, if at all, for another 15 years or
so.

Kall: It seems
like right now, there's an incredible opportunity we've got a failed system,
it's broken. Even the Wall street journal has said that "Wall Street as we
knew it is dead." Is there any talk in the Senate of really evaluating
what's going on and coming up with something "new and different" that
makes more sense?

Sanders: It doesn't quite
work quite like that (laughs). No. The answer is no to that. But I think on the
part of th4e American people, they are asking those questions, but I can't tell
you that's really filtered up to the Senate. 

What is just stunning—

Kall: I don't
get it there: how do we get it up to the Senate? Why—

Sanders: What we need to
do, number one obviously we need a new president we need to elect Obama, number
t23wo we need a strong grass roots movement who has to say to the Congress ,
"Stop looking to your campaign contributors for advice; listen to the
needs of ordinary Americans.

I sit on the budget
committee and I can tell you, I mean the good news out there, is that if we had
a sensible set of priorities in this country we could do extraordinary things.
Because you can co a lot of things for relatively small amounts of money. I
mean right now, you have a president who is spending 10 Billion dollars every
single month of the war in Iraq. 

Do you know that by
simply quadrupling the number of community health centers in this country,
federally qualified community health centers, you can provide primary health
care to every man woman and child, low cost prescription drugs and dental care
for less than eight billion dollars a year? You could do that for eight billion
dollars a year; we're spending ten billion—

Kall: So for
eight billion dollars we could be providing health care to every person—

Sanders: Primary health
care; I'm not talking about hospital care, I'm not talking abut surgery, but
every American would be able to go to see a doctor, or a dentist, regardless of
their income and low cost insurance.

Kall: So
there's all this leverage; right now, Congress has incredible leverage to get
these cessions, why doesn't somebody throw that in there so that at least we
make a major step toward taking care of Americans the way we morally should. 

Sanders: But what we're
trying to do now is to bring forth a major stimulus package. Remember: the
fight right now and a lot of people do not understand it, they don't understand
it, is that in the last two years, the Republicans have mounted 95
filibusters; did you know that?

Kall: When I
went to the Progressive Summit meeting in February, it was up around 60—

Sanders: It's now over
90; it's 95, I believe. Which is an all-time
World's record for one
session of Congress. So it's hard to do good things. You've got a president who
will veto serious legislation. But what we are trying to do right now is to get
a stimulus package which will begin trying to rebuild America; this one doesn't
go anywhere near as far as I would like, but it would put money into
infrastructure, there's a continuing resolution that was passed in the House today
that will be probably passed in the Senate tomorrow-- I hope it will be passed.
Which, among other things, doubles the amount of money that we spend for fuel
assistance to help people from going cold in the wintertime; that's legislation
that I helped write.

Kall: Be about
even with the previous year, then.

Sanders: Well, we'll
double the amount of funding; so it's going to be doubled in funding from the
Lackey Program, which is significant; so to answer your question, when you need
60 votes to get anything done in the senate, and on a good day we have 51,
that's hard. When you have a President that will veto anything, it's hard. 
I hope very much that
this election will give us a new president; I hope that we will have gains in
the House and the Senate and most importantly, I hope that we will have mass,
grass roots movement that which says to the congress, you've got to be bold,
these are tough times. We can have a national health care program for all
people we can make college education free or at least affordable. Are these
things expensive? Yes they are. But they are a hell of a lot less expensive
than the war in Iraq;
they are much less expensive that huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in
this country. They are much less expensive than spending 540 Billion dollars or
whatever on the military. So we need to change our national priorities and I
hope that we can move into that direction.

Kall: Amen.
One thing I wrote about today is that the amount we're spending on health care
is so much more than any other country, even though we're not getting great
quality...

Sanders: Yes, certainly. 

Kall: But the
system that we have is a quarter (25%) of our national budget, and it's getting
worse. It seems like we're just looking around the corner for that to become
another crisis were going to face and I wonder if it doesn't make sense to look
at that at the same time we're looking at this one.

Sanders: Well, look; you
can look at anything you want; George Bush is the president. Remember George
Bush is the guy who vetoed legislation to expand health care to a few million
low income kids; you're talking about transforming the entire healthcare system
and it isn't going to happen.
But again, your point
about healthcare is everybody should understand that while we have 46 million
Americans who have no health insurance and many are under-insured, the price of
health care is soaring; we spend twice as much per person on health care as do
the people of any other country. And yet the quality of our care, the outcomes are
not good and it is so much more expensive, so should we do what other
countries do and have a national health care system? 

Of course we should. And the truth is, we don't have
to spend any more. On health care and we can provide health care for all our
people. But it is certainly not going to happen under George Bush it won't
happen under a president Obama unless there's a strong grass roots movement,
because don't kid yourself, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical
companies, they are going to put money into the Democratic party; they don't
care what party they put money into as long as they look out for their
interests. 
And the only antidote to
that is a strong grass roots movement that says to members of congress whether
they and Rep or Dem hey, stop looking at your campaign contributors, in fact
let's move to public funding of elections and stop worrying about it.

Kall: We have
an interesting readership at OpEdNews. This month we're going to see about 700
thousand unique visitors; about 38% are Democrats, about 88% are
"Lefties". So these are not necessarily supporting democrats. They're
people who—you know, universally they love you, I'll tell you that! 

Sanders: Well,
thank you.

Kall: I have
one last question for you 'cause I know you’ve got to go. I have been
developing the idea of "Bottom Up. Bottom up is showing up in campaigns,
Joe Trippe talks about how it helped Obama beat Hillary with her Top Down
campaign—How do you see Bottom Up applying in your work?

Sanders: That's exactly
what we've got to do; we've got to re-vitalize American democracy I think
members of Congress are intelligent people, decent people are very isolated
from the realities of real life. I can tell you when I ran for the senate two
years ago, and I suspect that many of you are—you know, the way we ran; I don't
take any corporate PACS (political action committees) we had help from tens and
tens and tens of thousands of individual contributors—you know, put in 25
bucks, or 50 bucks; we knocked to win the election, you know, we put money on
radio and  television, but you know what, we hired a ton of people to go
out knocking; I think we ended up knocking on something like 17,000 doors in
the state of Vermont. 

So I think what we really
need to do is mobilize people to knock on doors to educate people—don't ever
underestimate what people in America DON'T KNOW about the political process.
Most people probably don't even know the name of their congressman, whether he
or she is a democrat or a republican or how they vote; the media is not going
to do it. The media covers what goes on here just terribly. They don't know the
difference between a huge bill of 500 billion or a small bill of 10 million. So
we need Independent Media and that's what you guys are doing. Which is if there's
one very positive thing I think is happening is there are many
progressive web sites, including yours, that does a great, great job in
bringing an independent perspective to people that you're not going to see on
CBS or ABC.

So there is an enormous
amount of work to be done, but I happen to agree absolutely with you: Trust me,
there will not be change even with a new president, more Democrats unless we
see pressure coming from the grass roots who demand that government starts
representing everybody rather than the elite.

Kall: Great.
Well, I hope we can have you back here periodically.

Sanders: My pleasure.
Thanks very much. Take care.

Kall: Keep it
up; great work, bye.

Bernie
Sanders. This is the Rob Kall radio show, that's Senator Bernie Sanders, WNJC it's
1360 am. 

Rob Kall
is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com and is a
columnist with Northstarwriters.com.
He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power
of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress,
Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant
specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump
speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences,
including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on
the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback,
biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology.
 
To learn
more about me and OpEdNews.com, check out this
article.

and there are Rob's
quotes, here. To Watch me on youtube, having a lively conversation with
John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here Now, wouldn't you like to see me on the political news shows, representing
progressives. If so, tell your favorite shows to bring me on and refer them to
this youtube video

My radio show, The Rob Kall Show, runs 9-10 PM EST Wednesday evenings, on AM
1360, WNJC and is archived on www.whiterosesociety.org Or listen to it streaming, live at either www.wnjc1360.com or here. 

Or check the archived interviews at: whiterosesociety.org

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A few declarations. -While I'm registered as a Democrat, I consider myself to
be a dynamic critic of the Democratic party, just as, well, not quite as much,
but almost as much as I am a critic of republicans. -My articles express my
personal opinion, not the opinion of this website. 

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