The banks are holding the people ransom for the value of their money. Just think if there weren’t any people all the money would be worthless. The latest scandal involves a collusion between banks setting the interest rates they would charge to lend money to each other. There is something seriously wrong with a system that can so arbitrarily decide the fates of millions of people with just an email asking a banker to fix an interest rate. This has turned into a perverse game corrupted by greed. No longer do these institutions serve any venerable purpose, instead it is now their province to find new and better ways to take our money. None of these money managers create wealth, but they sure know how to steal it.

Without new and firm regulation and resolution this idiocy is bound to continue. The difficulty is to find the few and the rare individuals who hold moral principles higher than their want of power or money. Perhaps this could be a new council instituted by the United Nations. Some sort of panel independent of the International Monetary Fund which has fallen prey to rampant corruption just like governments the world over. Independent of the Multinational Corporations which will, if left unrestrained with the same rights they have in the United States as citizens, eventually control the entire world. The time for change is now.

As mentioned before in this column, the simplest way to explain what has happened is just like in the game Monopoly. Sooner or later certain players own the most valuable resources and real estate and every one else pays. There is no built in system of sharing. The problem with a religious solution is that there are too many different systems of beliefs. It is time for people to forgo their ancient belief structures and venture some new tenets and mores which hold up but one prophet. Namely: The Common Good. A new version of an old idea. Something not based on an old religion of hunter gatherers who where at war with land owners and grain growers. Perhaps we could base it on common sense and preservation of humanity.

“Mother’s in the kitchen picking bones for breakfast
Boiling them down by the bushel and the score
Pull out your thumb and count what’s left of your fist
There’s a wolf at the window with ravening maw.”                                                          — Elvis Costello’s: National Ransom

Get off the cell phone and Drive! — Jake Shween