Bill Moyers & Company S1E22: Banking on Greed [New]
Episode description:
Banking on Greed
July 13, 2012Just when you think the reputation of banks couldn’t get any worse, comes word that we’ve seen nothing yet. As many as 20 banking institutions, including Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, UBS and HSBC, are reportedly under investigation for illegal and unethical practices toward protecting their profits at all costs and letting others pay for their mistakes. In this episode, financial expert Sheila Bair talks with Bill about the lawlessness of our banking system and the prognosis for meaningful reform. Bair was appointed in 2006 by President George W. Bush to chair the FDIC. During the 2008 meltdown, she argued that in some cases banks were NOT too big to fail — that instead of bailouts, they should be sold off to healthier competitors. Now a senior adviser to the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bair has organized a private group of financial experts including former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, former Senators Bill Bradley and Alan Simpson, and John Reed, once the chairman of Citicorp, to explore ways to prevent the banking industry from scuttling reforms created by the Dodd-Frank Act.
Also on the show, Bill talks to scientist and philosopher Vandana Shiva, who’s become a rock star in the global battle over genetically modified seeds. These seeds — considered “intellectual property” by the big companies who own the patents — are globally marketed to monopolize food production and profits. Opponents challenge the safety of genetically modified seeds, claiming they also harm the environment, are more costly, and leave local farmers deep in debt as well as dependent on suppliers. Shiva, who founded a movement in India to promote native seeds, links genetic tinkering to problems in our ecology, economy, and humanity, and sees this as the latest battleground in the war on Planet Earth.
Footage from Bitter Seeds courtesy of Teddy Bear Films
TOPICS: The Economy, Environment, Health & Science
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2 Responses to 'Bill Moyers & Company S1E22: Banking on Greed'
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Sunday, 15 Jul, 2012 at 10:49 am
frm the transcript:
Now as Senior Advisor to the Pew Charitable Trusts, Sheila Bair has just organized a private group of financial experts called the Systemic Risk Council. Among its members: former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, former senators Bill Bradley and Alan Simpson, John Reed, once the chairman of Citigroup, and Brooksley Born, the former CFTC chairman who back in the 1990s accurately predicted an economic meltdown.
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BILL MOYERS: So is your new group going to try to– going other advocate for these changes?
SHEILA BAIR: Well, I hope so. We’re certainly going to– we’ll be presenting these issues. I mean, Too Big to Fail is front and center. And again I think Dodd-Frank, just so we don’t go too far into these fear, I think Dodd-Frank has started making progress in ending Too Big to Fail. The funding costs, the costs to these very large institutions of issuing debt, funding themselves, those costs have gone up.
Their ratings, the credit ratings have gone down. The credit rate agencies as well as bond investors are starting to recognize that there’s a reduced likelihood that they would get bailed out if there’s another problem. So that’s a positive sign.
If you increase their funding costs you’re going to constrain their growth right there. But there’s certainly additional measures that can and should be considered and there are a lot of good proposals out there, some on the Hill, Senator McCain has one, Tom Hoenig at the FDIC has one, Senator Brown has one. So I think we’ll certainly, we’ll be discussing all of those and hopefully taking a position on that, yeah.
oh boy…
David [New]
Sunday, 15 Jul, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Haven’t watched this one yet, but I can’t say I feel good about any group that includes Alan Simpson.