March on Wall Street and Washington

It keeps coming. Now that outrage is swelling over AIG's bonuses, it's time to ask what should be done.

Today's New York Times has a story about protesters visiting the homes of two AIG executives who received bonuses and have pledged to return them. And Frank Rich in his column warns that President Obama must match actions to his words in resolving the credit crisis, or risk losing his presidency.

In The Washington Post, William Greider writes that the president must catch up with and channel the popular outrage that is the current mood, and that Washington must avoid putting more power into the hands of the "secretive" Federal Reserve if we are to keep from becoming a corporatist state. Greider sees this as a moment to reinvigorate democracy, but also as the moment when things could fail entirely.

I agree that this is a crucial point in history. Economic growth since the late 1990s has depended on two bubbles, and some have argued that our economy's structure today is such that we need to replace the housing bubble with a new bubble if we are to begin growing again. Renewable energy is certainly a candidate, but encouraging another bubble is a terrible idea...but to return...

Alexis de Tocqueville warned 173 years ago that excessive focus on the economy and material goods could erode the intermediate institutions that keep people engaged in the community, and eventually undermine citizenship and democracy. We were well on our way to this when the latest bubble burst, and Greider is correct in arguing that now is the time to renew our politics.

How should we do this? For a start, contact your elected officials, state, local and federal. Then take on the banks:

1. Tell politicians to support the bill introduced by Senators Durbin and Sanders to limit credit card rates to 15% and limit particular fees that banks charge.
2. If they don't, organize recall drives against them or run against them in the next election.
3. Organize protests, letters, petitions, referenda, and ballot initiatives against the corrupt and frequently immoral and/or usurious practices of banks.
4. Pay down your debts (especially credit cards) entirely, while living within your means.
5. If you can't pay your debts, default on your loans and start over. It will reduce your credit rating and make it much harder to get credit in the future, so think carefully about which loans you want to refuse to pay.
6. Get Congress to revisit bankruptcy law and make it more citizen-friendly (rather than its current strong bias in favor of creditors).
7. Insist that your credit card company (you should have only 1 or 2 credit cards) freeze your credit line at 10% of your yearly income. Never allow them to raise it unilaterally. Alternatively, direct them to freeze charges on your card if you carry a balance for more than three months.
8. Better still, work to see these rules made into law.
9. Don’t pay the debts of a deceased relative – you owe their credit card companies nothing, even though the companies will go right up to the legal line in trying to convince you otherwise.
10. Buy locally.
11. Start organizing locally-owned businesses and like-minded individuals to develop a local currency that you can use as an alternative to the dollar. This is realistic: a business owner has debts to pay that must be in dollars, but personal spending by workers and consumers need not be all in dollars.
12. Group together with like-minded people to buy large voting bloc shares of banks and then use the leverage to force changes in policy – of course, don’t do this if you can’t take the economic hit of seeing your share values decline when you do the right thing.
13. Get some folks together and march, but not in your own neighborhood and not against the sensible small bankers in your own town. Target your march constructively. March on Washington and Wall Street.
- Centinel