Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Karina Garcia, Lead Plaintiff in Class Action Lawsuit Over NYPD Arrests of 700 Occupy Wall Street Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
Two weeks ago the media was galvanized around the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Wall Street, asking experts if Wall Street has changed, could it happen again, and still puzzling over how it happened in the first place.
The answers are actually quite simple: Wall Street collapsed under the weight of its own corruption. It took down the whole economy because Congress in 1999 bought into the charlatan idea that banking supermarkets – where FDIC insured deposits were housed under the same roof with Wall Street’s cowboy traders – would “modernize” the U.S. financial landscape.
We now know, but few will admit, that Congress was conned into this charlatanism that restructured Wall Street into the precise structure that created the Great Depression through impure motive. As explained in this March 16, 2012 Bill Moyers Interview on PBS With John Reed, the former Co-CEO of Citigroup, Sandy Weill, was pushing to repeal the law that separated banking from Wall Street speculation not out of altruism for his country but to become obscenely rich:
JOHN REED: [Speaking about the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.] “No one that I’m aware of saw it clearly. You point out to some Senators and Congressmen who did, but somehow we described them as being peripheral. And I simply said, ‘They’re wrong.’ Turned out they weren’t…
“Sandy Weill. I mean, his whole life was to accumulate money. And he said, ‘John, we could be so rich.’ ”
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