How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War - Softcover

"There are many descriptive, narrative accounts about Wall St. and the current economic crisis available to readers today. But Stephen Lendman's new book takes the analysis far deeper than a simple narrative. Lendman emphasizes and focuses on the connections between Wall St. actions and the political system in Washington. How money operates on both sides of the street - the banking and the political - is described in detail. The reader is left with a broader, deeper understanding of why the recent crisis happened and where it may well be headed. Most importantly, the author does not shirk from calling the outcomes of the Wall St.-Washington alliance for what it represents: the emergence of a new kind of class war in America. Readers will find of special interest his innovative views on banking and public banking. Lendman's book is definitely one not to be missed." (DR. JACK RASMUS Professor of Economics, Santa Clara University)"

Lendman contends that for over one hundred years powerful bankers have used their control over money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment, bankrolling and colluding with the US Congress and administrations to implement laws favouring them. As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic financialization, and rabid capitalism followed, producing asset bubbles, record budget and national debt levels, and depression-sized unemployment far higher than reported numbers, albeit manipulated to look better. After the financial crisis erupted in late 2007, even harder times have left Main Street in the early stages of a depression, with recovery pure illusion. Today's contagion has spread out of control, globally. Wall Street got trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to socialize losses, privatize profits, and pump life back into the corpses by blowing public wealth into a moribund financial sector, failing corporate favourites, and America's aristocracy. While Wall Street boasts it has recovered, industrial America keeps imploding. High-paying jobs are exported. Economic prospects are eroding. Austerity is being imposed, with no one sure how to revive stable, sustainable long-term growth. This book provides a powerful tool for showing people how they've been fleeced, including a plan for constructive change.