REPORTING FOR DUTY
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Apr
10
Instapundit has a post up about the “New Way Forward” protests planned for this Saturday.
They’ll be marching this weekend to urge that banks that are “too big to fail” be broken up. This makes sense to me; I’ve said the same thing myself, as has Jerry Pournelle.
But if you look at the top of their sample press release that they are making available to their organizers it clearly says:
The largest citizen-initiated, all-volunteer protests for bank nationalization and structural reform of Wall St. since the meltdown.
And from one of their flyers:
We hate the direction that this country is going. We want Obama to be stronger.
This group’s main complaint seems to be that the government is not getting enough of a return for the money it is pouring into banks.
Do not be fooled into thinking that this group is against the bailouts in the same way the Tea Partiers are. The only problem this crowd has with the bailouts is that they don’t trigger explicit nationalization.
The financial corporations that caused this mess must be broken up and sold back to the private market with strong, new regulatory and antitrust rules in place — new banks, managed by new people. An independent regulatory body must protect consumers from predatory practices.
Notice how it’s not just banks, it is “financial corporations”, leaving one to wonder what other companies would fall under their protective umbrella of Socialist Utopian control. Also no word from them or any Progressive Socialist Democrats as to what “too big” is, or what “predatory practices” means.
Is the government ever too big to fail?
We wonder what this group thinks of banks like Northern Trust and Wells Fargo, who never wanted the TARP funds and can’t give them back without the threat of a major debilitating audit.
They also blame the entire economic meltdown on bankers. The only fault the government shares is that it didn’t protect us from the big evil capitalist bankers.
Checking through all of their literature and their website reveals that there is not one mention of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. That should tell you plenty right there.
UPDATE:
A commenter below offers us this link to a blog post on the NewWayForward.com blog.
Not quite true about no mention of Fannie and Freddie:
“Smaller but still significant executive bonuses scheduled to be paid out by more enormously-unsuccessful, bailed-out financial institutions. This time it’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
We stand corrected, but it beckons the question, was it the greedy bankers that corrupted Fannie & Freddie or the other way around?
We have no problem blaming greedy bankers when appropriate, but let’s also be honest about the other pillars of this disaster.
If you look through all of the press releases and pre-made flyers that are found on NewWayForward.com, the only target for derision and vilification is the greedy bankers. What about HUD? What about ACORN and CRA? Or is NewWayForward saving that for their next protest.
Comments
5 Comments so far
Not quite true about no mention of Fannie and Freddie:
“Smaller but still significant executive bonuses scheduled to be paid out by more enormously-unsuccessful, bailed-out financial institutions. This time it’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
http://anewwayforward.org/blog/?p=73
“An independent regulatory body must protect consumers from predatory practices.”
How about we protect ourselves, with some common sense, instead … instead of ONCE AGAIN letting “those who know better” tie down our economic systems like Gulliver.
It was our DEPENDENCE upon the advice of financial “ex-spurts” that led so many of us into this mess — as in, check common sense at the door and blindly follow those who basically told us we could get something for nothing.
Now, the Administration and their New Way Forward followers … in many areas, not just financial … are encouraging our DEPENDENCE upon their alleged “wisdom” to get us out of this mess.
The solutions, folks, are not going to come from a relative few Whiz Kids from academia … no more so than they came from the Whiz Kids from the banks.
The solutions are going to come from 300 million problem solvers … and how easy or how hard the solutions will come will be in large part based upon how much freedom, resources and empowerment they can/are allowed to keep, to find them.
The solutions are going to come, not from DEPENDENCE … especially a dependence upon government that will be extremely hard to reverse.
They are going to come from more INDEPENDENCE … a return to INTERDEPENDENCE that doesn’t place our individual fates at the total whim of others.
A socialist letter appears in this post:
http://templeofmut.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/socialist-sneer-at-tea-party-efforts/
Reading it will provide greater understanding of how they intend to say that we Tea Party protesters are being “greedy”!
[...] Good roundup of what they’re about at Founding Bloggers. [...]