Posted on 10/22/2009 11:13:33 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Michael Moore: Take All Your Money Out of Banks and Stocks By Noel Sheppard Created 2009-10-22 13:59
Schlockumentary producer Michael Moore Thursday advised his readers to take all their money out of banks that received bailout funds AND divest themselves completely of American stocks.
Such lunacy was posted [1] at Moore's website as part of a list of things he recommends people do "to fight back and try to fix this very broken system."
Moore began by listing five truly hysterical demands of the President and Congress:
1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.
2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage [2], no compromises allowed.
3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826 [3].
4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here [4] for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.) 5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change.
Yikes! Is it Halloween already?
If you're not sufficiently frightened, maybe some of Moore's suggestions concerning what you should do to protect yourself and your loved ones will do the trick:
1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money [5] and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union [6]. [...]
3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.
Wow! So let's kill America's top banks AND divest all of our funds from American corporations.
Almost sounds like the kind of stuff Osama bin Laden puts in his videotapes, doesn't it?
Of course, it would be very interesting to find out whether Moore is following his own advice.
After all, when Moore claimed back in 2005 that he didn't own stocks in American companies, it was revealed [7] by Peter Schweizer that he owned shares in Boeing, Sunoco, Best Foods, Eli Lilly, Bank One, and even the dreaded Halliburton.
With this in mind, maybe Moore should have to prove that he's actually taken all of his money out of bailed out banks and U.S. stocks before he recommend others do.
With bacon.
Last call for publicity on his craptastic movie.
Actually add a ham sandwich and maybe he’ll choke on it...
Great idea. Let’s ruin this country once and for all.
How’s that movie doing fatso?
Does anyone have the means/talent to investigate his own investments? It would be interesting to see if he puts his ‘money where his mouth is’...
Yeah, right, I’ll take my financial advice from this bloated bastard.
...and invest in lead, food, and gold, ‘cause Obama’s about to collapse the economy.
Put your money into Bill Thomas’ Haloburger, Ya-Ya’s Chicken and Big John’s Steak and Onion (local fast-food chains around Flint, Michigan. Looking at Moore I’d say those are a sure-fire bet...)
1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money [5] and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union [6]. [...]
If your bank is on the socialist teat, you don't want to be there with them. Similarly, don't buy from Government Motors or UAW-Chrysler.
....using donuts as buns
....using donuts as buns
Did I read that right? I guess it doesn't matter because the low life numbskulls who listen to him are not working/earning much...let alone saving or investing.....
Cool, then I'll simply stop making payments- I mean if I get to keep my home, why pay? And while the bank is re-adjusting my home loan, can they re-adjust my car loan too? I'm pretty certain my car has decreased in value too.
And MM, please take a shower before a interview.
(1) Do NOT purchase any book by Michael Moore.
(2) Do NOT spend any money to see a Michael Moore movie.
(3) Do NOT, as far as you are able, allow any of your hard-earned money to make its way into the hands of the raving lunatic known as Michael Moore.
‘Medicare For All will end this misery’
See the change? It’s not ‘universal’ healthcare anymore. It’s not ‘government run’ anymore. It’s not ‘public option’ anymore. It’s not ‘co op’ any more...
Now the new key words are ‘ expand medicare for all’ = government run...
How about a Federal Law that people MUST be allowed to attend movies even if they don’t buy a ticket? How about a Federal Law that movie makers MUST supply free DVDs to those who do not want to pay for them? Let’s just make everything free for everyone all the time. Surely this would make the world a better place. We would all have everything we ever wanted. Sheesh. The Left is insane.
I have absolutely NO affection towards Michael Moore - but he’s correct that we should stop using banks that treat money as debt (all of them) and look at starting to use banks that treat money as an asset (none of them currently).
yes, maybe he shorted the S&P 500 right before his recommendation, figuring he is such a powerful figure that he could drive the S&P down, all by his fat self.
The “Runs on the Banks” and the subsequent panic caused the Depression to have no foothold to recover from.
Maybe I'm missing what you are talking about, but all of the deposit accounts (checking, savings, CDs, etc.) are debts for the bank. I put $100 in a bank, so they owe a debt of $100 to me. Their assets are either the cash from my deposit (so they have $100 in debt to me and $100 in assets of the currency sitting in their vault), or they loans they make with expectation of being paid back with interest.
Unless our nation stops using debt-backed instruments for trade then we have absolutely no foothold to recover from.
We need to get back to using capital-backed instruments in our economy.
Put more simply - our "money" needs to represent "past labor completed" instead of a "claim on future labor not yet done".
Better option: Contact the SEC/FINRA and file a complaint that this guy is soliciting financial advice.
Exactly.
Our nation's economy operates solely on the principal of debt-backed financial instruments - whether that be loans made by banks or treasury securities sold by the Federal government.
We cannot economically survive this way. The largest banks in the world control our entire economy. Our government has no power to affect change in this area.
All "money" is simply a claim on the future labor of an individual in our society.
When you get a paycheck you are receiving a "transfer" of future claims on someone else's labor from your employer to you.
People look at the cash in their wallet or purse as "money" that represents an asset. It is an asset to them - but it represents a claim on future labor. In other words, the individual holding the "money" is a slave owner of the one that will need to perform that future work the money represents.
Clear as mud? ;-)
We need a monetary system that is capital-based. We can still use FRN's, but we need to stop banks from using them to loan as debt to others.
A bank should be a place where you deposit your money and pay the bank a small fee for keeping it safe. No more. No less.
Every company should be required to submit their business plan for review by a government panel that is charged with the responsibility of determining if the product they wish to produce is really necessary for the good of all. If it isn’t, then it shouldn’t be created/manufactured/produced. Therefore, in my opinion, movies are not in any way necessary to human survival and do not need to be created in any way whatsoever.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, to quote my long-sainted grandmother.
“The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people’s homes are now truly worth — and what they can afford”
What’s the point of learning what it’s worth if it’ll be based on what they can afford, anyway? the latter sorta cancels out the former.
And furthermore, every citizen should have to report once a month to their local post office for a “weigh in” to see if they are maintaining a healthy weight, which indicates whether or not they are maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
If they tip the scale at the PO at a weight higher than the approved weight for their height and age, then off they go to the government-provided weight-reduction classes, also held at the local PO.
i agree with him on this stance i would do the same because the biggest stock market decline will soon be upon us.
“Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies”
I love this little delusion. Everything was smooth. The federal government watched over the system for us. made sure it was fair and just. Then Reagan swooped in, freed the beasts of greed, let them run wild, and a short 20 years later the system imploded.
Seriously, I even saw this on the History Channel. It blamed the Great Depression on Andrew Mellon’s tax cuts, too. FDR, by the way, was a popular guy. Lifted people’s spirits, he did. I can’t say whether he helped the economy or not. The History Channel didn’t tell me.
“The ‘Runs on the Banks’ and the subsequent panic caused the Depression to have no foothold to recover from.”
Technically, something else caused the runs, which caused the deflation, which caused the depression. But not a decade of depression. That was caused by the desperate attempt to save the depression from bottoming out, with all sorts of Cures Worse Than the Disease, like taking us off the gold standard.
After careful studies, I’ve come to believe there’re only two options for the future of our financial/banking system. 1) We can have a sudden, sharp, disastrous collapse, which no one can stomach, and no one will do on purpose. It may happen by accident, as it did in Weimar Germany. But so long as we can help it, we’ll avoid it. 2) We can go on inflating and deflating (mostly inflating, in the long run), over and over again, with recessions/depressions every few years, some worse than others, into infinity. Possibly also ending in utter collapse. That’s the track we’re on now.
I happen to believe that things would be better overall with situation #1. But we don’t have the guts.
“Maybe I’m missing what you are talking about, but all of the deposit accounts (checking, savings, CDs, etc.) are debts for the bank”
The way fractional reserve banking works is they use your deposit to create a new $100 dollars that never existed before, hoping that both the loans they extend are paid back at a profit, and that you don’t withdraw your money in the meantime. Along with the magic money created by the Fed, that’s the essential building-block for the house of cards that the banks erected to screw us last year.
“i agree with him on this stance i would do the same because the biggest stock market decline will soon be upon us.”
It will if everyone follows your and his advice, for sure.
I know how Moore must hate hypocrites, so I’m asking Mike to take that fifty million or so he’s earned off the rotten capitalist system and redistribute that dough to people who need it...like me. Come on Mike, be a pal. You must hate all that filthy lucre. I don’t.
You left out a few of his “suggestions” - for example, this one, which some might get a kick out of when looking at a picture of Michael Moore:
5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she’s right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, “Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants”). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I’ve turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny — she’s fit, she’s rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don’t put our own “oxygen mask” on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!
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