Change happens slowly sometimes, especially when there is a healthcare proposal in Congress.
Robert Reich makes a point I’d like to highlight: “Bailing out the financial system, but not bailing out schools in financial trouble because of the crisis, is unconscionable.” This kind of thinking takes some time to produce, though some of us, including Reich have been saying it for some time. Our collective conscious is there already, but many of our friends and family wouldn’t know how to put it in words. Much of our job is about helping people to put into words the injustices and issues they already know.
Fordham University is hosting the first ever Too-big-to-fail and Break Them Up conference, called “Breaking up the Banks? New Ideas for Limiting Bank Size”. We have a new kind of concentrated power to deal with, this conference is a culmination of a year’s work of many people who have pushed to break up the big banks and address the issues the big financial institutions pose to society and the economy. Major influences for this conference come from Simon Johnson, Zephyr and Shawn Bayern, and the work that ANWF organizers have done here. Zephyr is a good friend, advisor, policy person, and organizer to A New Way Forward and now conference convener. We’re grateful to all the stuff she has done in the past year to make breaking up the banks that much more possible, including bringing the world of anti-trust into the prescient issue of too-big-to-fail. This is a paradigm shift in anti-trust, which once only meant trustbusting to make sure sure consumers got the best price. Now, it means that and the securing a safe financial system, and hopefully, the securing of real democratic structures. If you’re interested in going, you can RSVp and get a free meal. I’ll be there, as well ad Donny Shaw of ANWF.
Archein