Dear Senators,
It is now up to you to restore the integrity of the Department of the Treasury.
As the Department’s web site states, Treasury’s job is to:
“Maintain a strong economy and create economic and job opportunities by promoting the conditions that enable growth and stability…protecting the integrity of the financial system, and manage the U.S. Government’s finances and resources effectively.”
President Obama’s nominee, Jacob Lew, does not measure up to the task.
Since the days of the Clinton Administration, the office of the Treasury Secretary has morphed into the custodian of Wall Street interests, allowing fraudulent banking practices to lead us into a recession, paying little or no heed to the concerns of Main Street about economic growth or jobs. Moreover, unlike the George W. Bush presidency where Enron executives were jailed — little has been done since the latest crisis to prosecute the people responsible for the widespread criminality and total disregard of ethics and values in finance.
The new Treasury Secretary should be an individual who looks out for the 99%, not a Timothy Geithner clone who would rather save financial players than enforce the law. We need someone who will focus on the productive economy and jobs. We need someone who will push back against Wall Street, not someone who will do their bidding.
Jacob Lew’s tenure at the original too-big-to-fail bank, Citigroup, has disqualified him. He received a $900,000 bonus from Citi in 2008, essentially paid out of the taxpayer bailout, just before he returned to government. At best this has the “appearance of impropriety”.
As HSBC’s “too big to jail’ settlement shows, the too-big-to-fail problem persists. We need a Treasury Secretary who will work to address this. Despite being near the heart of the storm, or perhaps because he was at Citigroup, Jack Lew shows no recognition that the current structure of the banking system is the heart of the problem. We must block his appointment.
Criminality and greed are embedded in the culture of the financial system and only major reform will get rid of it. Please join us in our efforts to reject Jacob Lew and ask President Obama to nominate someone who can truly live up to the mandate of the U.S. Treasury.
Sincerely,
Members of the OWS Alternative Banking Group
Marni Halasa
Josh Snodgrass
Hannah Appel
Linda Brown
Nicholas Levis
Cathy O’Neil
Anchard Scott
Yves Smith
Akshat Tewary
Pingback: Alt-Banking calls on Senate to defend Main Street against Wall Street (#OWS) « mathbabe
It doesn’t matter whether people think Lew is a “good guy” or a “bad guy”. The point is that we need to send the message that the US Department is not owned by the big banks.
Unless or until, the BIG BANKS are whittled down to manageable size the economy and the 99% will be at the mercy of the Oligarchs.
The Federal Reserve System has proven itself to be incompetant to manage the country’s supply of credit, or even to recognize the existance of a problem in the supply of credit. We do not need a BIG BANKER at the helm of the Treasury.
I’ve recently read Richard Franklin Pettigrew’s 1922 book with the self-explanatory title, “Triumphant Plutocracy: The Story of American Public Life From 1870 – 1920. And C. Wright Mills’ 1956 book, “The Power Elite”, about the 20th century rise of the corporatocracy, the source and storehouse of the power elite’s money. And an assortment of Greg Palast’s investigative reportings on the present day machinations of power. The American political system has been almost wholly occupied by the bankers and the beneficiaries of monied corruption. Already in the 1800s Senator Pettigrew was describing America as a plutocratic empire operating behind a transparent veil of republican formalities. Mills describes America’s “political” government – Congress, the Senate, the Presidency, the judiciary – as the “second tier” power structure. The first tier power that makes policy for “the government” is the big bankers and corporations. ALEC, not Congress, writes the legislation. Palast reports on the means by which the powers currently steal elections, appoint their people to all the posts of political and judicial power, and effectively prevent any “democratic” constraint on their freedom to dominate and plunder. Appealing to this self-serving power structure to reform itself to serve the public interest is futile, like Gadaffi asking NATO to unilaterally lay down its overwhelming force of arms and come and reason together. Ellen Brown is promoting public banking at the State level, to provide a public supplement to rather than a direct replacement of big private banking. But State legislatures who possess the power to implement this simple reform, that is highly beneficial to State and municipal fiscal interests and to the interests of local businesses, are brainwashed or corrupted into preventing the banking reform. Big money will not give up its monopoly of power, not without a mass movement by a population with nothing left to lose, like 1930s support for communism as a desperate alternative to the capitalist system that had utterly failed so many people. I’m not suggesting that anyone give up our reformist advocacy and political pressure. I’m just saying that we are not up against a failure to understand the technical nature of our current malaise, a problem that could readily be solved with the application of rational alternatives that effectively serve the public interest. We are up against a deeply entrenched power structure whose members very much enjoy their privileges and will not foresake their private interests to serve our public interests unless they absolutely have to. My argument may be interpreted as cynical or realist. The proof is in the failed pudding of reform history, and history’s proof will be repudiated or confirmed by the success or failure of present “rational” reform efforts.
This misses the point. Both the president and Treasury are in violation of the constitution’s provision to allow for alternate forms of money to pay for what Congress has authorized.
Congress normally has the authority to “coin Money” (Art. 1 Se. 8), but see here for how the president can do it when Congress won’t raise the debt limit:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Debt-No-More-How-Obama-ca-by-Scott-Baker-130122-872.html
Restore integrity to the DoT, say no to Lew.