GRIP OF GIANT BANKS ON ECONOMY STRONGER THAN EVER

SYSTEMIC DISORDER

Grip of giant banks on the economy stronger than ever

Jan22

“Too big to fail” banks are bigger than ever. Holding the global economy hostage, extracting profits from every aspect of human activity and remaining well above the reach of the law are simply business as usual — not to mention extremely profitable.

The six largest banks in the United States — each among the world’s largest — reported composite net income of $91 billion for 2013. Yep: $91 billion in cold cash, for only six enterprises, and that total is the profit after paying out their colossal salaries and bonuses.

To put the total in further perspective, the six banks enjoyed a profit margin of 19.1 percent. By way of comparison, the average corporate profit margin in mid-2013 was 9.3 percent. It would seem that financiers have managed to trudge on despite suffering the critiques of people who refuse to believe that their multimillion-dollar compensation is a God-given right.

No less than an authority than Gregory Mankiw says that’s so. Professor Mankiw was the chair of the council of economic advisers under former U.S. President George W. Bush and is currently the head of the economics department at Harvard University. But if you are expecting scholarship from someone with such credentials, you will be disappointed. For example, he wrote in his paper, “Defending the One Percent”:

“Those who work in commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and other financial firms are in charge of allocating capital and risk, as well as providing liquidity. They decide, in a decentralized and competitive way, which firms and industries need to shrink and which will be encouraged to grow. It makes sense that a nation would allocate many of its most talented and thus highly compensated individuals to this activity.”

So there you have it: Financiers do not self-select on the basis of lust for money without regard for the damage they do to others, but are anointed by society. Do you recall a referendum selecting them? I do not, either.

Accountability? How quaint!

Opportunities for upward flow of money were not in short supply last year. Here are the 2013 full-year results for the six largest banks, as reported by the companies themselves last week:

• JPMorgan Chase & Co.: net income of $17.9 billion on revenue of $96.6 billion. That was JPMorgan’s profit after setting aside $8.7 billion to cover legal expenses.
• Bank of America Corp.: net income of $11.4 billion on revenue of $89.8 billion.
• Citigroup Inc.: net income of $13.9 billion on revenue of $76.4 billion. Although Citigroup’s 2013 net income was close to double that of 2012, it was nonetheless considered disappointing! Not even Citigroup is immune from the pitiless system it and its peer institutions have created. Its stock price has dropped several points since last week, meaning the market is demanding it squeeze out more profits.
• Wells Fargo & Co.: net income of $21.9 billion on revenue of $83.8 billion.
• The Goldman Sachs Group Inc.: net income of $8.0 billion on revenue of $34.2 billion. Those profits are after compensation and benefits totaling $12.6 billion. The average compensation for a Goldman Sachs employee for 2013 was $383,000, lower than the $399,000 of 2012. Oh the humanity!
• Morgan Stanley: net income of $17.9 billion on revenue of $96.6 billion.

How big are these six banks? So big that they hold 67 percent of all the assets in the U.S. financial system, considerably more than they held five years ago.

Cause the crash and then profit from it

And what “services” do these too-big-to-fail financial institutions provide? Matt Taibbi,in the Rolling Stone article that gave Goldman Sachs the memorable moniker of “vampire squid,” summarized:

“Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest.”

Goldman Sachs and its peer intitutions seek to extract money from every aspect of human activity. These, and other banks, have never had to accept responsibility for bringing down the world’s economy. Other than a few individuals who have been hauled into court because their scheming was too blatant to ignore (who are always tagged “rogue traders” as if they don’t operate within a well-established system), it’s business as usual.

Why should the we be at the mercy of a tiny elite that knows no limits to its rapaciousness? A crucial component of a better world would be a drastically shrunken banking system, under democratic community control, oriented toward human need and rational investment, and prohibited to engage in any speculation. Banking should be a public utility. The point of a market is to serve humanity — yet under the current world capitalist system, human beings exist to serve markets. And markets are nothing but the aggregate interests of the most powerful industrialists and financiers.

Financiers may see themselves as untouchable monarchs when they look into a mirror, but we need not swallow such nonsense any more than our ancestors did when they ceased to believe that a king is chosen by God to rule over everyone.

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