I suggest the following three goals:
1. Bring back real capitalism (no more bailouts).
Wonkbook: Gingrich and Romney have the same problem
2. End “too big to fail” banks.
3. Get Wall Street money out of the legislative process.
Let’s look at each one:
No more bailouts. Bring back real capitalism!
The United States used to be a capitalist system. Companies lived and died on their own successes. “Corporate welfare,” the term coined by the late Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.), was introduced in 1971 with the bailout of Lockheed Aircraft. Thus began a run of corporatism, not capitalism. Some companies, less than successful in a competitive marketplace, chose instead to feed at the public trough. Innovation, execution and hard work were replaced with lobbying, crony capitalism and bailouts of failure — all of this paid for by taxpayers.
“Socialism for bankers, wrenching capitalism for the working stiff” is not a slogan you are likely to see on a bumper sticker. But that’s what the United States had morphed into by then.
America needs to end this system of spoils. There should be no more bailouts, no more crony capitalism, no more government-determined winners and losers. We simply cannot live in a society of privatized gains and socialized losses.
End “too big to fail.” Restore competition.
As George Shultz once said, “If they’re too big to fail, make them smaller.”
The current economic approach of “too big to fail” is itself a failure. It reduces economic competition, concentrates risk and raises costs for consumers.
I agree with William Black, law and economics professor at the University of Missouri, who notes that the “too big to fail” moniker is misleading. We should start calling these firms by the more accurate phrase “systemically dangerous institutions.” “Too big to fail” makes it sound like size is the problem; we should be focused on the systemic problems of these companies, regardless of size. “Systemically dangerous institutions” is an accurate phrase and appropriately pejorative.
“Too big to fail” has also brought a different set of problems: The bailouts have made the top 10 systemically dangerous institutions an even bigger, less competitive oligarchy. We need to bring back competition by limiting the size of these firms. We can do that by capping their deposits, in terms of total percentage or specific dollar amounts. There are many ways to accomplish this, including a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. cap on deposit insurance. And if the OWS people were smart, they would bring former FDIC chairman Sheila C. Bair into the discussion.
Take Congress back from Wall Street.
Whatever changes come, they will only be temporary if the current system of spoils is allowed to continue.
The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly on campaign finance reform, finding against voters and in favor of corporate interests. The only way to take the government back is a constitutional amendment.
The United States has become a “corporatocracy.” Campaign finance and lobbying money has so utterly corrupted Congress that we might as well put elected officials up for bid on eBay. Even the state attorneys general have become targets of aggressive lobbying, most recently in Florida. We must become a democracy again, where one person/one vote matters. To do that, Wall Street money must be taken out of the process.
The only way to accomplish that and have it withstand Supreme Court review is a constitutional amendment mandating public financing of congressional elections and criminalizing the purchase of politicians. We need to marginalize lobbyists and make voters the most important people in the nation.
A national campaign to get that amendment on every ballot in every state is a very doable goal.
These are all doable, measurable goals that can have a real impact on legislation, the economy and taxes.
Amending the Constitution to eliminate dirty money from politics is an essential task. Failing to do that means backsliding. Whatever is accomplished will be temporary without campaign finance reform.
Ritholtz is chief executive of FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He is the author of “Bailout Nation” and runs a finance blog, The Big Picture.
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