Feeling Furor in Response to "The Money Heist" Part III

 

Feeling Furor in Response to Four Seasons of La Casa de Papel,

“The Money Heist” – Part III

 

I hasten to exempt and even praise the governors of New York, Illinois, California, Washington, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Michigan as well as the mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta and Philadelphia whose forward looking leadership continue to save incalculable lives.  These governors and mayors demonstrate the kind of leadership the country needs.  Elected officials regardless of office or party affiliation will face the calculus of strained resources, natural disasters, culture conflicts, racial injustice, environmental fairness, digital divides, substandard public education, infrastructure projects and other twenty-first century global village challenges on local, state, national, regional and international levels.  Demographers project the world’s population will double by 2050.  This prospect necessitates leaders with vision, talent and interpersonal skills to assist the global village in preparing to feed, house, educate, transport, clothe, employ and provide healthcare to twice as many people with the same amount of land and shrinking agricultural, natural and environmental resources.  As I severely criticize the fictitious characters of The Money Heist for their  disdain of the people whom they pretend to represent, I more harshly condemn anyone who assumes leadership and advocacy for common people and fail to deliver a better quality of life to them.

 

Nonetheless, “the Professor” and his coconspirators offer a compelling and provocative indictment of the banking class and its control over the governing class.  This fictional polemic raises valid concerns about wealth and allocation of resources to nearly eight billion global citizens.  As the world’s population doubles, will we maintain the gross imbalance of one percent of the world controlling more than ninety percent of global wealth?  Assuredly, analysis of the banking and ruling class often yields unsubstantiated rumors and unproven conspiracy theories.  While I discard such baseless and meritless claims, I believe tough questions are worth tireless and painstaking inquiry.  The prominent finance documentary, 97% Owned, posits the non-negotiable reality that international banks and multinational corporations rule the world.  Apparently, the banking class shrunk paper money to only three percent of the world’s currency, while the remaining lion’s share lies within computers.  The banking class uses unsecured debt to imprison average persons who do not have liquid income or savings.  Aging, in the United States, average households do not have $400 in savings for emergencies.  Broken appliances, car trouble, blown tires, sudden illness or bereavement result in burdensome debt averaging an 18.25 APR that borders upon usury.  Is it true that Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and similar financial entities run the world? 

 

Arguably and cynically, the banking class literally owns the nation.  It can pass any law it wants.  Governors, state legislatures, Congress and the judiciary on all three levels heed the orders of the economic elite.  They will not be denied, nor will they be deterred in accomplishing their objectives. Following the 2008 economic and housing crash, none of the persons who devised this crisis were held accountable.  No one from Wall Street was indicted, convicted or imprisoned.  Both Republicans and Democrats failed the American people in this regard; neither the Bush or Obama Department of Justice or Securities and Exchange Commission did anything to adjudicate the purposeful decimation of the housing market.  Mortgages were given to tens of thousands if not millions of persons who were not financially prepared for them.  Subprime lenders of the third and fourth tiers knew a disproportionate percentage of these people would default.  As long they received their commission payments, they did not care.  They proceeded to pump air into the bubble until it burst; an eventuality for which they prepared and shielded themselves.  Beyond leveraging their bets, they utilized offshore protective options.

 

These economic handmaidens of the banking class relied upon its immunity as empaneled in American jurisprudence through Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (558 U S 310).  This landmark U S Supreme Court decision overturned the 1990 opinion, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which regulated speech and funding by corporations in campaigns and the 2003 case, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, that limited corporate financing in elections.  Citizens United legalized oceanic amounts of dark money in American politics.  Without any requirements relating to disclosures of donors and amounts, political action committees can funnel treasure troves of money into executive, legislative and judicial elections throughout the country.  Cynically, this decision legalized bribery and extortion.  Recently, an appointed U S senator from a Southern state was the subject of an insider trading criminal investigation relating to stock sales following a confidential briefing of senators about the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020.  Fascinatingly, this investigation was dropped on a Monday following a Friday night contribution of $1 million to a political action committee connected to President Trump’s re-election campaign.  Any reasonable person could characterize that contribution and the subsequent cessation of the investigation as a rank bribe.  However, because of Citizens United such blatant and large scale grift and malfeasance are permissible. 

 

More frighteningly, in each presidential election cycle, citizens even nominally observant of American politics can associate a few candidates’ names with the financial backing of certain billionaires.  It is as if these wealthy businessmen hired their own candidate.  A former Midwestern governor was tied immediately to a Southwestern casino magnate known to have very conservative and reactionary views in the Republican Party nominating process of 2016.  “He is owned by the Koch Brothers” is an often-said phrase of members of the U S House of Representatives and Senate.  More than their party affiliation or ideological positions, governors and mayors are known for any association that they may have with wealthy donors.  Is there any discernible difference between “The Donor Class” and “The Banking Class?”  What is rightly and pejoratively labelled as dark money currently controls American politics regardless of which party occupies the White House or maintains a majority in the houses of Congress. 

 

As federal judicial decisions cohere with partisan politics, it appears that justice is also malleable by the self-serving interests of major donors.  Important federal decisions determine the interaction between the banking class and average citizens.  Cynically, one wonders whether the judiciary has been bought.  An independent judiciary is the final recourse for average citizens to receive fundamental fairness; they lack the financial resources and political influence of business conglomerates.  If the courts have been bought, then what is the worth of the constitution?  Do any American ideals and governance principles remain?  There are scenes in La Casa de Papel in which “the Professor” and his coconspirators manipulate the courts and legal system.  They advocate for due process and legal fairness as they perpetrate crimes. Is this the writer’s way of shaming and condemning the banking classes as they compel taxpayers to bail them out of fraudulent excesses that they knowingly, willfully and intentionally committed? 

 

It is the height of irony that the banking classes demand bailouts to preserve their wealth from common people whom they confine to a merry-go-round of debt.  From the Silverado Savings and Loan bailout to the Charles Keating scandal to the housing crisis of the George W. Bush Administration, average taxpayers have subsidized the excesses of the banking classes without receiving anything in return.  This international series induces these public policy and governmental questions.  Chief among these inquiries is whether the judiciary will compensate for the incapacities of the executive and legislative branches in drafting and passing appropriate laws to rein in these excesses.