That’s the new rallying cry for this movement, called “A New Way Forward,” which is organizing economic reform protests—including one in Seattle at Lake Union Park—for April 11th.

Their assessment of the problem:

Big banks have grown to dominate our politics and our economy. It has to stop. We demand serious reforms that go beyond just resetting the status quo. We are here to demand that change.

Their plan:

NATIONALIZE: Experts agree—Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention—no more blank check taxpayer handouts.

REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused.

DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place— new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that’s “too big to fail” means that it’s too big for a free market to function.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

18 replies on “Nationalize. Reorganize. Decentralize.”

  1. With changes in Mark-to-market, no bank will ever be insolvent again from illiquid or heavily devalued Level 3 assets. It would take an actual run on deposits.

  2. You know, you could just switch to a local credit union and accomplish it a lot quicker just by that one action.

    But then you wouldn’t get to dress up in costumes and hope to appear on TV …

  4. These simple plans always amuse me. I had a P&G prof who liked to say that the US needed a new Constitutional Convention to fix the problems that have arisen in 200+ years. When I asked how she would handle the massive global economic crisis caused by the default of the US government (which is what a convention would effectively do), she had no clue what I was talking about. No clue at all about how fiat currency works, overnight bank-to-bank lending rates, etc. I don’t know much about those things myself, but I do know that you can’t just burn a third of your city to the ground and not expect dire consequences.

    Blowing up the banking system might eliminate bankers making multi-million dollar bonuses, but it will also eliminate a large portion of small businesses. Without the credit extended by the banking system, small businesses can’t get their supplies. Taxes might *hurt* small businesses, but lack of credit *ends* small businesses.

    SO… after you’ve thrown a couple million people who work in the banking industry onto the street, and watched 10 million small businesses fold or never start, what kind of economy do you have?
    (answer: a 3rd world economy where there is no trust, rule of law or growth)

  6. and for the right wing response, I’m gonna steal this line from one of loons in the shoplifting thread, it seems apt here as well:

    “go jack off to your Che Guevara poster.”

  7. @4 – you assume large banks are actually extending credit to small business.

    In point of fact, they aren’t.

    That’s why President Obama is requiring them to report MONTHLY on how many loans they make and for what amount to small business.

  8. I like it, except it’s missing a couple of steps including “public castration” and “beatings by small children with sticks.”

  9. @4: The banking system *isn’t* extending credit. That’s the problem, that’s why the banks need to be taken over. If our economy is dependent on what the banks do, and the banks aren’t doing the right things for the economy, then we need to make the banks do what the economy needs. Or, we can let them continue doing the wrong things, and allow our economy to shrivel up.

  10. Another group of party hack wannabes trying to sound radical in order to get boots on the ground, only to toss them aside when they get their own big promotion at a super cool non-profit. Seen it all before during WTO. OOOOO, smash the banks….no wait, we can reform them, but thank you for bolstering my credibility. Back to your anarchist playpen now.

  11. no one is calling for “blowing up” the banks @4, or “smashing” them @5. Nationalizing banks is a perfectly normal thing to do when banks are insolvent.

  12. @11 banks wont be insolvent when they can mark the value their Level 3 assets to value at maturity.

  13. Will – I know that banks aren’t lending to small business right now. I actually work in that market, and it’s dying. Thanks for making sure that this is clear to all.

    My point is, when there is mutual trust present in the economy, banks loan to small businesses. Eliminating that entire system through “reform” doesn’t solve the real fundamental problems in the capitalist system. (Firing all the people who run banks, and turning them over to rookies is essentially “blowing up” the banking system.) Financial “instruments” that create fake wealth from nothing, and then the use of that fake wealth as collateral is a huge problem. Quarterly reports & estimates required of public companies push execs to fudge numbers, also creating fake wealth. Fake wealth works if everyone believes the money is really there. Lack of trust destroys it.
    All this talk of the market “losing” 15+ trillion in the past 18 months should be taken with a boulder of salt. Most of that money never existed, except on dishonest balance sheets.
    The banks and investment houses didn’t lose a ton of money. They lied to themselves about how much they really had. When they started to realize that most of their new found wealth was based on lies, they lost confidence in themselves. That was the trigger point in the rapid slide last fall.
    Forcing banks & investment firms to make loans that they do not believe in is not reform, it’s foolishness. Forcing them to honestly account for how much wealth they actually have is sensible policy.

  14. It’s like grounding children …

    Or worse yet, you come home and find the cops in your place after your kids threw a major kegger in your house.

  17. Commercial banks have held up relatively well in the current calamity. It’s the non-bank financial institutions, insurers (like AIG) and hedge funds that have been the problem.

    Certain classes of bank lending have slowed because of the liquidity trap. They need to hoard cash in order to cover expected future losses on earlier loans and investments.

Comments are closed.