Quid Pro Quo

(Banks, Wall Street, and Billionaires)

Quid pro quo is a Latin phrase that refers to a mutual exchange of things of equal value.  A similar phrase is tit for tat.  And a common metaphor is: I’ll scratch your back and you scratch my back.  The problem is that we, the people, have been scratching the back of banks, Wall Street, and billionaires for years without even getting a “thank you” note, let alone, a back scratch.

Consider the banks.  Remember that thing called the Great Depression back in the nineteen thirties?  Most of you will have to rely on grandparents or history for that memory.  Because of lack of regulation capitalism excessed, the money market collapsed, and banks failed.  What this cost was an economic depression so severe that America went belly-up financially.  President Franklin Roosevelt’s social programs and World War II finally restored our financial equilibrium. And we managed to put the banks back in business – we, meaning the tax payers.

Remember the Savings and Loan Scandal back in the nineteen eighties and nineties? These small financial institutions began operating as if they were regular banks.  They handled savings, mortgages, and loans.  Due to economic fluctuations, the Vietnam War and Great Society costs, unwise lending, and outright fraud, almost one third of these institutions went bankrupt.  One half were in the state of Texas.   They cost the people a minimum of 132 billion dollars (225 billion today).  But we bailed them out – we, meaning the tax payers.

Remember the 2008 financial crisis that extended around the globe and brought it to its financial knees? It was due largely to lack of adequate regulation and scams that rocked Wall Street financial institutions and finally came back around to bite the perpetrators and they failed. Millions of citizens lost their housing, their savings, and their retirements. But, we bailed Wall Street out – we, meaning the tax payers.

We have all heard that most of the wealth in our country belongs to less than one percent of the population.  These folks swim around luxuriously in a pool of billions of dollars.  I suspect that the only way a capitalist can become a billionaire in America is by paying employees far less than they should and charging customers far more than they should.  In brief, they must operate an undemocratic business – one that does not honor equality of human worth or focus on the common good.  They have to be more concerned about profit than people, otherwise, their employee’s financial boat would have risen along with their own and the consumer could have afforded their product without excessive cost.

Here is my point.  We, the people have, over and over again, bailed out big business from its scams and failures.  And we have grossly over-paid for the products that have made the billionaires wealth.  Now, we, the people, are in a horrendous financial jam brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.  Small businesses cannot stay open and workers can’t stay employed. The common citizen, the people, cannot pay their bills and are going bankrupt.

Its quid pro quo time for the banks, Wall Street, and the billionaires.  It’s time for them to pony-up and bail out the thousands of small businesses that make less than a hundred thousand dollars net profit a year.  It’s time for them to give back some of the billions they have taken from the taxpayer’s pockets.  And, in doing so, they must demand that the Internal Revenue Service determine who qualifies and funnels the money.  No one else in the Trump administration can be trusted to sponsor this program without imposing on it another scam that will return the money to big business swimming pools.

But, then, I daydream.  If these bankers and Wall Streeters and billionaires are where they are because they lacked democratic principle, then why would they be motivated just because the people that have sustained them are dying, both physically and economically? After all, as in the past, we will continue to be around as willing victims to satisfy their despotic greed.

Robert

Robert T. Latham