Margaret Flowers on Corporations

Wealth divide makes capitalism dangerous to the 99%

Capitalism serves the well-being of the holders of capital. The concentration of wealth in the few along with the financialization of the economy has made capitalism dangerous to the 99%. Capitalism works for capitalists by ensuring workers are paid less than the wealth they create while consumers pay more for their necessities and debtors are stuck in a cycle of debt they cannot escape. Resources are extracted as inexpensively as possible despite the impact on the planet, public health and safety; while the costs of extraction and production are externalized to the people through corporate welfare and crony capitalism. When capitalist bets go bad they are backed up by a corrupt government while the non-capitalists lose their homes, life savings and incomes.

Break up big banks & criminally prosecute their CEOs

The big banks need to be broken up and policies must be put in place to prevent them from getting too big again. After the economic collapse rather than shrinking, the big banks grew. Why? Because in addition to being too big to jail, they were too powerful for Congress to confront.

Once the banks are broken up we need to ensure they cannot get too big again. A cap could be put on the banks perhaps based on a percentage of the GDP. There is actually a good deal of support for breaking up the big banks among members of the Federal Reserve, former bank CEO's and political leaders.