[Peace-discuss] [Discuss] Fw: What hath got rot?

[C. G. ESTABROOK]

That's funny, and I admit that I've had my differences with the soi-disant
socialists in town - going back to their refusal to support me and the Green
party when I ran against Tim Johnson in 2002, as you remember.

In fact there are credit unions in town, which I'm sure many of us use, and a
good thing, too.  But Arianna Huffington's "move your money" campaign is at best
a bit of liberal quixotism, at worse a smoke-screen.

Here's Doug Henwood on the subject:

"The latest populist spasm is Arianna Huffington’s 'Move Your Money' campaign,
which would have those of us with money in large banks move it to small ones.
This touches on another foundational populist fantasy: that virtue and size are
inversely related. Her website, which thrives on the unpaid labor of hundreds of
eager contributors, even provides a helpful list of convenient local banks if
you enter your zip code.

"What’s wrong with this scheme? Several things. First, many small banks have
more money than they can profitably invest locally. As Barbara Garson shows in
her wonderful book, Money Makes the World Go Around, the portion of her book
advance she deposited in tiny upstate New York bank was probably lent via the
fed funds market to Chase, where it entered the global circuit of capital. This
is not at all uncommon. Money is fungible, protean, and highly mobile even when
it looks locally rooted. That very mutability is part of what makes money so
valuable: it’s the ideal form of general wealth that can instantly be turned
into caviar, lodging, Swedish massage, or shares of Google.

"The point can be further developed by looking at some of the banks that
Huffington’s site recommends. Entering LBO’s zipcode, 11238, into their helpful
little machine yields several suggested receptacles for one’s savings. One, the
black-owned Carver Federal Savings Bank, is a major financer of the
gentrification of predominantly black neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. As
those neighborhoods get richer, Carver boasts, it’s partnering with Merrill
Lynch (a subsidiary of the Bank of America) to offer wealth management services
to the flusher new residents. Another suggestion, Apple Savings Bank, has about
three-quarters of its assets in securities like U.S. Treasury bonds, not local
loans. They don’t come much bigger than the U.S. Treasury. And a third, New York
Community Bank, which even features that precious word in its name, financed a
private equity group that bought up a lot of apartment buildings in New York in
the hope of squeezing out the rent-regulated tenants and replacing them with
more lucrative ones paying market rents. With the real estate bust, the PE firm
is having trouble servicing its debts, and the residents of its buildings are
suffering as services are cut further.

"Yes there are some decent places to park your money, like community development
credit unions. But there’s only so much they can do with their holdings. There’s
no way they could accommodate even a small fraction of our near-$8 trillion in
bank deposits without turning to Treasury bonds or Merrill Lynch wealth
management services. Getting banks under control is a matter of politics, not
individual portfolio allocation decisions.

"Move your money and it’s still money."

--CGE

"Two men and one pair of pants is not socialism."
--N. Khrushchev (i.e., socialism cannot exist in conditions of scarcity)



John W. wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 7:02 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu 
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
> 
> 
> Not being a liberal but a socialist, I'm not looking for an escape route. I 
> wouldn't have wanted to miss the most interesting and affecting observation
> on this matter that I've seen on this list. --CGE
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks, Carl.  Now here's the rejoinder to that, so as not to leave anyone
> out:
> 
> If you and all the other self-styled "socialists" in this town were DOERS, as
> Melodye and Bob suggest, rather than mere talkers, you'd be organizing a
> credit union, for example, and we'd all pull our money out of Chase Bank and
> Bank of America and pool it in our very own Socialist Credit Union, which
> would pay far higher returns on investment because there'd be no profit
> incentive for stockholders, no big executive salaries, no annual bonuses, and
> low administrative costs.  We'd loan money to our socialist members for home
> mortgages, to lessen the probablility of their losing their homes to
> foreclosure by faraway corporate behemoths trafficking in human lives via
> sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps.
> 
> We could also, for example, pool our money in a health insurance pool - from
> each according to his ability, and to each according to his need. That's how
> the modern-day health insurance companies started out, after all - as local
> benevolent associations organized among immigrant groups or co-workers.
> 
> The possibilities are virtually limitless if one is willing to put one's 
> money where one's mouth is.  My experience of the "socialists" in this town
> is that it doesn't even occur to them to car-pool to meetings.
> 
> John again
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> John W. wrote:
> 
> On this list, three of us have been and are the harshest critics of the new 
> health care 'reform' bill:  Carl, Dave Johnson, and me.  I'm curious which of
>  the three of us has NOT, in the eyes of Bob and Melodye, worked our asses
> off to try to make both the local community and the larger society a better 
> place, according to our lights and talents.  Name some fucking names.
> 
> The way I see it, most of the folks on this list have decent health
> insurance, so they have the luxury of being "ambivalent" about the health 
> care bill, reminding us of its many virtues and counseling us to take a 'wait
>  and see' approach.  I, on the other hand, have no health insurance, and will
>  NOT have Medicare when I'm 65 due to a quirk in the law over which I had and
>  have no control.  I can't speak for Carl and Dave, but I have actually 
> suffered the indignity of sitting in the Frances Nelson Clinic, getting a 
> different doctor every time, KNOWING that there were tests not being 
> performed because Frances Nelson could not perform them in-house, and having 
> pills shoved at me which I KNEW would do no good but which were all that 
> Frances Nelson had to offer. Having to present proof of income documents over
>  and over so that even Frances Nelson's precious and scarce resources would 
> not be "wasted" on me.
> 
> The only decent medical care I've received in LIFE was at McKinley Clinic 
> when I was a student at UIUC.  They have government-run, "socialized" 
> medicine there; the doctors are on salary and all the services are "free", 
> even the prescription meds, paid for by a student fee.  There I finally found
>  a physician (female - God bless her) who cared about me as a human being,
> and ordered tests that were based on what I as a patient NEEDED rather than
> on what I could afford or on what paid the doctor the most money. Sadly, when
> I ceased to be a student I could no longer avail myself of her services.  God
>  bless her.
> 
> So I'm afraid I can't be as blase as the rest of you about this shitty bill 
> which leaves health insurance companies firmly in control. Nothing at all has
> changed for me, not a God-damned thing.  And you can bet that if nothing has
> changed for me, it's not changing for millions of other Americans who are 
> not, perhaps, as articulate as I am.
> 
> Oh, yes, I forgot.  Something HAS changed for me after all, or it will in - 
> what?  2014?   I'll be mandated to purchase a terrible private-sector health 
> insurance plan, with money I don't have and with deductibles and co-pays so 
> high I won't ever be able to actually use it, or else I'll be fined for my 
> failure to purchase it.  Please forgive me if I don't see that as a benefit.
> 
> Yeah, I'll shut up now.  Every time I try to talk personal realities "on the 
> ground" rather than abstractions, all the liberals' eyes start darting around
>  the room, looking for an escape route.  Don't think I don't see it.
> 
> John W.


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