From LaVern F. Isely
Monroe
To the editor:
I'm 80 years old and very concerned about keeping a local honest-run banking system, which is crucial for all these small towns across our country. Our local banks were around when I got a start in farming and my goal is to keep them around so that when politicians come to town, I go see them and tell them about my growing concerns.
That is, since the big investment banks lobbied for years to get rid of the Glass-Steagall Act, with both political parties, they finally achieved it in 1999. Since then, the goal of big banks is buy other banks and merge them altogether as one, which would be the biggest mistake we ever made because you're limiting competition, essential to make our system work.
If you think merger-mania isn't taking place, just go to your local library and get the movie "Too Big to Fail," which just happened to fail just a few months before President George W. Bush left office. This could have happened to either party because they should have kept Glass-Steagall to keep the commercial banks separate from the investment banks and the stock market.
The banks, who deal with daily currency transactions, need to have a gold standard to back their currency, which is something that President Franklin Roosevelt believed in, so as World War II was winding down, he organized a meeting in July, 1944 at Bretton Woods, N.H., which consisted of 44 leading countries, where they set up a currency system backed by gold, which worked great until President Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard Aug. 15, 1971.
These and many other issues are discussed in a great book I'm reading "Currency Wars; The Making of the Next Global Crisis" by James Rickards. This book was brought to my attention when I was reading a book written by Steve Forbes, who I don't always agree with, particularly on his flat tax, where he says earned income and unearned income should be treated differently.
The thing I do agree with Forbes on is that he is a backer of the gold standard because it's a real commodity like all the commodities traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. This is a total different picture when these commodities went to Wall Street and the derivative numbers totally exploded, along with margin and leverage ratios.
Monroe
To the editor:
I'm 80 years old and very concerned about keeping a local honest-run banking system, which is crucial for all these small towns across our country. Our local banks were around when I got a start in farming and my goal is to keep them around so that when politicians come to town, I go see them and tell them about my growing concerns.
That is, since the big investment banks lobbied for years to get rid of the Glass-Steagall Act, with both political parties, they finally achieved it in 1999. Since then, the goal of big banks is buy other banks and merge them altogether as one, which would be the biggest mistake we ever made because you're limiting competition, essential to make our system work.
If you think merger-mania isn't taking place, just go to your local library and get the movie "Too Big to Fail," which just happened to fail just a few months before President George W. Bush left office. This could have happened to either party because they should have kept Glass-Steagall to keep the commercial banks separate from the investment banks and the stock market.
The banks, who deal with daily currency transactions, need to have a gold standard to back their currency, which is something that President Franklin Roosevelt believed in, so as World War II was winding down, he organized a meeting in July, 1944 at Bretton Woods, N.H., which consisted of 44 leading countries, where they set up a currency system backed by gold, which worked great until President Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard Aug. 15, 1971.
These and many other issues are discussed in a great book I'm reading "Currency Wars; The Making of the Next Global Crisis" by James Rickards. This book was brought to my attention when I was reading a book written by Steve Forbes, who I don't always agree with, particularly on his flat tax, where he says earned income and unearned income should be treated differently.
The thing I do agree with Forbes on is that he is a backer of the gold standard because it's a real commodity like all the commodities traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. This is a total different picture when these commodities went to Wall Street and the derivative numbers totally exploded, along with margin and leverage ratios.
