There's no institution more important in any city or town than our commercial-run banks. That's why Kenneth R. Feinberg's job is so important, which is to investigate the compensation of the bank executives, which should be limited, because they received government bailout money. In a lot of cases, you'd have to say that they were banks going bad because of lack of regulation, such as when President Clinton got rid of the Glass-Steagall Act, which was documented in PBS's Frontline program "The Warning." You could replay it, if you had a computer or used one at the library. Alan Greenspan, who was Fed Chairman at the time and that is our number one banker, said he made a mistake by making the money so easy to get that he created a bubble in our construction trade.
Now, there are people in Congress that are trying to do something to improve things and there are other people in business trying to stop them. Even though Frontline stated that we have almost $600 trillion in toxic derivatives, these same people don't want any regulations put on them or their salaries even though a lot of these billionaires are hiding their money offshore to escape paying federal taxes. Already this year, 100 banks have gone bankrupt. How many is it going to take to get something really done?
If you look up the Web site: thomas.loc.gov you'll find out that the House of Representative already has 307 signed on to a bill sponsored by Republican Rep. Ron Paul entitled H.R. 1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Act. It's companion bill in the Senate is S.604 Sunshine Act of 2009 sponsored by Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and has 30 co-sponsors. The problem is though, that even through the House is over half-way signed on to want an investigation of the Federal Reserve and its current chairman, Ben Bernanke, the people in the Senate aren't halfway there, and it's going to take maybe even 60 sponsors to determine what went wrong.
After looking up these two bills, call your legislators and ask them why they haven't signed on. If you don't and wonder why we're losing jobs in this country, there's no more important business than a well-run commercial bank, where the loans stay local.
