I love the squishy sound of juicy bits (free news ala Phil Gramm)

 

Remember Phil "Nation of Whiners" Gramm" who accused Americans of experiencing a "mental depression" because the economy is really in dandy shape?

Remember how he blamed the media for getting us all hot-and-bothered about absolutely nothing?

Remember that Phil is was John McPain's top economic adviser?

[You may want to read my personal rant about Phil before you digest this next point, because you'll understand how Phil just caught with his underwear showing.]

Remember that Phil is a rich white former Texas senator who is now vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss bank?

Well that last point is where the juicy bit comes from. How about this from ABC News:

Federal regulators should consider revoking the US banking license of the giant Swiss Bank UBS because of its role in helping wealthy Americans evade billions of dollars in taxes, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) told ABC News today.

Aawwwwww schnit. Aren't Swiss bank accounts notorious havens for the rich to hide safely secure wealth from the IRS to ensure a level of tax-evasion safety not available to poor, working, and middle class folks? Let's see what my new-best-friend Levin has to say:

Levin said UBS practices resulted in its U.S. clients maintaining undeclared Swiss accounts that collectively held "$18 billion dollars in assets that have been kept secret from the the IRS."

"They wanted secrecy. UBS gave them secrecy," Levin said.

Levin revealed a list of "secrecy tricks" he said the UBS bankers used to carry out their tax haven schemes.

Ladies and gentleman. $18 Billion may not sound like an entire mint, but we're talking about the shady down-low of ONE Swiss bank. Can you imagine the sea of tax free blood money hiding across the entire Swiss banking system?

Phil, while you're accusing us of hallucinating a faltering economy, you're (at least) an accessory (MR. VICE CHAIRMAN) to the crime of helping wealthy Americans stash their tax-free cash for a rainy day. Do you think I'm crazy enough to believe that as vice chairman, you had no frickin idea what goes on between the American wealthy and the Swiss banks? 

I haven't yet read any articles that link your recent attitudes about the economy to your shady connection to corruption amongst the wealthy... but I have a finger pointed at you... and a bet that you were always clearly one of the worst people to represent an American opinion about the current economy. How can you pretend to know the impact on regular honest tax-paying working folk like me? Apparently, Levin agrees:

"Tax havens," said Levin, "are engaged in economic warfare against the United States and honest, hardworking American taxpayers."

Comments

[GC]

Ms. Bond
I cannot beat them
what do you suggest I do?

[Hawa]

GC: That's an excellent question that I recently lamented while commenting at another blog. What does an average person do to reverse the corruption that benefits the wealthiest 5% of Americans?

Face it, we keep electing them as the folks qualified to make policy concerning the economy. We keep buying their wares. And in many cases, we are hopelessly dependent on the broken system.

I'm reading Derrick Jensen's book "The Endgame, Volume 1." I'm waiting to get to the part where he recommends actions for ordinary folks like us.

For now, my family works to spend less, live more off the land (e.g. locally grown produce), hoping to one day build an oil-independent home (e.g. wind and solar energy), and actively search for more answers. I know they're out there...

[Deacon Blue]

I find myself wondering a lot lately if there really IS anything that can be done long-term. I don't like to go into defeatist mode but I cannot help but notice that the period in which there was a strong middle class and working class and the dream of success was something that a lot of people could get at least a small taste of (well, white people mostly, but that's another rant for someone else who isn't melanin deficient like me)...well, it was a pretty darn brief period historically speakikng, and seemed to be a strange happenstance resulting from the end of World War 2.

Although we haven't gone overtly into the realm of workers being openly oppressed by the rich, I can't help but notice the steady erosion of the middle class (working class and white collar both) and the increasing demands on our time as employees, often with no real compensation for being overworked.

In other words, we seem to have a slightly nicer looking version of the rich totally screwing over the poor...and an attempt to create a larger class of "poor" that can be more easily controlled...and I cannot help but wonder if the lord-and-serf model is really the natural state of world politics/economy and we're just coming to the end of a fluke period.

Depressing thought, but it does make me wonder...