Bigworld, >>> We're screwed <<<
Yes I agree, but the current US budgetary shortfalls could be quickly fixed with a 1% Wall Street sales tax on trading turnover. That would be 1% of the multi-quadrillion dollars worth of trading turnover per year, with 1/2 of the tax proceeds going to the States, and 1/2 to the Federal Treasury. Individual investors with under $10 mil in turnover/year would be exempt, so the tax would only hit the parasitic Wall Street firms and hedge funds. Even considering that the current flash trading volume would disappear overnight, a 1% tax on turnover would still yield in the trillions of dollars per year, enough to balance US Federal budget and the budgets of all 50 states.
Then you reinstate Glass Steagall, re-ban most types of derivatives (credit default swaps, synthetic CDOs, etc), and nationalize the Federal Reserve. To end the current economic depression, Congress and the President would then direct the newly nationalized central bank to issue successive $1 trillion tranches of interest free credit for productive purposes only - rebuilding infrastructure, roads, bridges, ports, rail, build 100 new fourth generation nuclear power plants, 1000 new hospitals, fund science + technology, restart the space program, etc. This will create 30 million new productive jobs and bring the US back to full employment.
The key requirement in allocating the interest free credit is that none of this credit can go to the non-productive Wall Street zombie bank speculators or hedge funds. Currently all of the trillions of low interest Bernanke bucks has gone only to the non-productive financial services/zombie bank sector for propping up their toxic derivatives and for speculation. That's why there has been no recovery in the real economy -- all the money has gone down the zombie bank rathole. None of the Bernanke credit is available for productive purposes - to qualify for it you have to be a zombie bank.
This is what should happen, but it would require a real President instead of the typical Wall Street puppet they stick us with every 4 years. In the last 80 years there were only 3 Presidents who dared to seriously stand up to the banking cartel, and all were subjected to assassination plots (FDR, Kennedy, Reagan). FDR threatened to nationalize the Federal Reserve if they didn't issue credit for the real economy, and the Fed relented. Reagan had said that he would not accept Bush Sr as his VP running mate (Bush being the Trilateral/Rockefeller representative). Reagan relented, but they tried to assassinate him anyway. And of course Kennedy - 1) fired Alan Dulles and vowed to break up the CIA into 'a thousand pieces', 2) was pulling the plug on the Vietnam War, and 3) had issued $5 trillion in debt-free US Notes that would have threatened the Federal Reserve's monopoly.
