Read other letters about this article

• Sunday, March 29, 2009 06:57 PM

  Another enlightening article

  There's another article on the same topic which absolutely horrified me recently: "Infinite Debt" by Thomas Geoghegan in Harper's. It lays out in stark detail how the abolition of usury laws in the US (under the tender ministrations of credit-industry lobbyists and our corrupt Congress) allowed the financial sector to produce profits for their investors of 300% or more. With that sort of profit to be had, is it any wonder that investors ran away from the manufacturing industries - industries which would normally produce 3-5% profit?

  There's a great deal more in the article, which is well worth reading. Unfortunately, it's only available to subscribers (and by coincidence, I got my subscription to Harper's for renewing my Salon subscription). It's well worth looking up. If you can't afford Harper's, try to see if you can find it in your local library; it's the April 2009 issue.

  But I ran into an odd juxtaposition last night: a story on NBC's Dateline about the "Debt Trap". I thought it might shed an interesting sidelight on the insights raised in "Infinite Debt". And it did - but not in the way that I hoped or expected.

  Rather than report on the wholesale usury of the financial sector and the complicity of Congress in abolishing age-old protection for the public from financial wolves, Dateline instead focused on some sleazy debt collectors who used "questionable" practices. They - gasp - lied to the people they were calling! Watching these lower-class employees chatting and smoking on secret camera in their parking lot, I couldn't help but be reminded of the "bad apples" like Lyndie England who carried the Bush Administration's torture policies and ended up taking the fall for them.

  Dateline thoughtfully announced that everyone filmed by the secret camera had later been fired.

  But it was the management of that debt collection company that really must have run up the Dateline dry-cleaning bill. The producers must have ejaculated into their pants about twenty times over when they found that the owners of the company were all black "gangsta"-types. Thugs and criminals, to be sure. But very minor criminals indeed compared to the real criminals: the respected members of Congress, the titans of industry, and the media who all cheered as organized labor was broken and the game was rigged in favor of a financial sector whose sole purpose was to shear the sheep - the public - to the bone.

  The maximum interest rate allowed used to be 9% plus a small additional percentage. And now...there IS NO maximum. We have been turned into nothing more than beasts to be slaughtered in the financial stockyard. And the "winners" of society, obscenely wealthy and virtually all-powerful, continue to hold the reins of power firmly in their hands - and by all signs, they always will.

  It's a bitter pill to swallow.

  —Peter Maranci Read Peter Maranci's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel