Obama & Geithner's trickle-down economics

President Obama’s plan to save our economy by saving the banks is the new version of trickle-down economics and moves us closer to a corporatocracy.

The US Government should support the growth of smaller, well-managed, solvent US banks and invest directly in citizens and services rather than expecting huge payments to goliath banks to trickle down to us tax-paying citizens.

By investing in the large insolvent banks right now the US Government states, with amazing clarity, that it values industry over citizens. For so long the US Government has made decisions based on the influence of industry lobbying and corporate-backed think tanks. The decision to buy banks’ bad assets represents this same approach. “We’ve got to save the banks to save the country.”

I just heard a bankers association spokesman comment on the displeasure of smaller, perfectly solvent banks about being lumped in with “the banks.” If all of these solvent, well-managed banks out there are doing fine, why don’t we offer them the opportunity to buy up the larger banks in chunks. These smaller well-managed banks would take over the assets of poorly managed larger banks. This would lead to growth of local and regional banks, creating a stronger, more competitive and, therefore, innovative playing field within the US banking industry. Local banks could lend to local businesses and local citizens.

It makes no sense for the largest banks, the ones that have become insolvent due to greed and poor management, to be in the room with legislators and the Administration planning the recovery. Guess what the result will be: Large banks get all the US Government money. Surprise!

And who will benefit from those US Government investments in large banks? The first people to benefit will be the executives of said large banks. Other bank employees and shareholders come next. After that, US citizens and businesses may benefit by being able to take out more loans from those banks. Yay! US Government funds get siphoned off by the large banking corporations and then make their way to us citizens as loans. Just what I need. More loans and more debt.

Einstein said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” And yet our big bankers are thinking up the solutions to the problems they created.

Let the big banks fail, auction off their bits and pieces to small local and regional US banks. Invest US Government money in services for the people. Become a government of the people, before the US becomes a complete corporatocracy.