Like Somali Pirates, Wall Street Holds U.S. to Ransom

This is an interesting comparison...and a good one.
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Somali Pirates were condemned when they hijacked tankers, took sailors hostage and demanded million-dollar ransoms. But their demands were a drop in the bucket compared to the ransoms demanded by Wall Street.

And the Somalis were kinder to their hostages than Wall Street is to millions of unemployed Americans. For while the Somalian pirates returned hostages unharmed, bankers, fraudsters and failed insurers continue to harm the US administration and hold millions of Americans hostage. The latter are being stripped effectively, of pensions, savings, livelihoods and jobs.

The Pentagon ordered the US Navy to apprehend Somalian pirates. However there has been no such 'Counter Piracy Execute Order' from the White House or US Treasury and aimed at Wall St. buccaneers. On the contrary. The US Treasury, like the British government, is capitulating to the pirates of the finance sector with a haste and a timidity that is unseemly, and if I may say so, unmanly.

Britain's government announced yesterday that while it was obliged to take a 65% stake in a 'broke' bank - Lloyds - it was refraining from exercising its full rights. The government would not, for example, use its stake in the bank to give taxpayers full control. Nor would they call for the resignation of CEOs and board members responsible for breaking the bank. Lord Mandelson the Business Minister said this was neither "necessary or desirable".

The US Treasury has set the pattern. While filling the vaults of Wall Street banks with taxpayer-backed funds, Secretary Geithner has refrained from asking for letters of resignation from the board members and CEOs that broke the banks. These banks have used their control over the nation's deposits and savings and over interest rates to hold the whole economy to ransom.

The US administration, like the British government, is pumping taxpayer-backed 'liquidity' into these banks without giving taxpayers full control over the banks.

The liquidity has gone through the front door. An indecent proportion has been funnelled straight out the back door to pay bonuses to failed executives. The rest of the loot has been grabbed and hoarded by the banks and is not being lent out to companies and households at affordable rates.

In other words, the pirates have been paid a handsome ransom and left in charge of the hijacked ship that is the nation's finances.