Interesting that, over time, one can point to certain things and definitely show where things started to go wrong.
16th Amendment
17th Amendment
Repealing the Glass-Steagall Act and allowing them to do what they want.
The aforementioned are three of those things.
Glass-Steagall stood strong for 70 years, allowing families and local businesses to live in a stable housing and commercial market.
In the 1990s, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas pushed repeal of GSA to make banks more “competitive”. That was the sales pitch. Americans had fallen asleep at the switch forgetting why GSA was vital to stability.
What followed were Wall St Banks gobbling up as many state chartered banks that they could.
What empowers Wall St Banks is their ownership and access to central bank facilities (Federal Reserve). Fed dollars can be ‘created’ at special computers and a click can send billions to thousands of accounts worldwide instantly.
Money is no problem to these banks. They run what amounts to casinos intertwined with federal statutory hands in paychecks taking their cut for ERISA retirement funds. They deposit funds into employer/employee accounts. They’re not allowed to touch such accounts but they borrow against them at leverage ratios of 1000:1.
We witnessed our state banks bought out, their names and logos at neighborhood branches were replaced with names like :
Bank of America
Citibank
Wells Fargo
Chase
US Bank
Etc.
After Wall St acquisition managers completed takeover of Main St banks, they used their access to central bank dollar creation to offer teaser loans to home buyers and homeowners refinancing.
By 2005, Mortgage Brokers working for these Wall St loan pushers were signing up anything with a social security number and a pulse.
In the background, Wall St bond managers were creating Mortgage-Backed Securitues (MBS) using the personal information of people that Mortgage Brokers submitted, and many of the spreadsheets had fictitious names.
By 2008-2009 Wall St collapsed both the markets and the economy while they made off with trillions. Yes, trillions. Documented.
Coming into the 2010s until the present, Wall St sharks are using the same Mortgage Brokers to act as “investors” offering to buy dwellings for cash, sight unseen. Most have seen the junk mail.
And the market grab now extends to farm land.
Long and short, Americans need a new Glass-Steagall and Trump supports it.