THE NATION: …The traditional liberal approach calls for more regulation. But, important as it is, this tool for controlling corporate behavior has been increasingly undermined by fierce lobbying. As Senator Dick Durbin observed, “The banks…are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they, frankly, own the place.” Most of those who created the mortgage crisis went scot-free, and the financial reforms that have since been enacted are flimsy in many areas and easily evaded. Nearly two years after the Dodd-Frank legislation was approved, only 108 of 398 necessary regulations have been written, 148 deadlines have been missed (67 percent) and nearly two dozen Congressional bills scrapping parts of the law proposed. The draft measures implementing the Volcker Rule (which limits proprietary trading by banks) are so full of holes as to be almost meaningless.
The underlying problem is that the economic and political power of corporations in general, and banks in particular, has grown dramatically. On the eve of the Great Depression in 1929, 250 banks controlled roughly half the nation’s banking resources. Now, a mere six banks control almost 74 percent of the nation’s banking resources. The steadily increasing concentration of power occurred, not surprisingly, as progressives’ power declined. Organized labor, the institution that has given progressive politics its muscle, has shrunk from a 1954 peak of 34.7 percent of the workforce to a mere 11.8 percent—only 6.9 percent in the private sector. As unions have grown weaker, conservative politicians at the state level, backed by right-wing-funded lobbying groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, have launched drives to pass a raft of “right to work” and other anti-labor laws, further undermining the liberal-left’s key institutional power base.
That corporations can undo the regulations affecting them has been demonstrated time and again. Starting with trucking, airlines and railroads, since the 1970s deregulation has gone forward in sector after sector under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. The trend has continued in the energy, communications and, to a lesser degree, food and drug industries. The big coal and oil companies have resisted comprehensive curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, including spending millions in 2009–10 to defeat cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate after it passed the House. This is in addition, of course, to concerted efforts, year in and year out, to discredit climate change science… (more)
EDITOR: The radicalness of the prescription reflects the desperateness of our nation’s maladies of corporatism and plutocracy.
