JC vs Capitalism: Foreclosures, Unemployment & Wall Street Bailouts

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bankster bailout, capitalism a love story michael moore, capitialism, cooperatives, deregulation, economics, kaptur, land grab, Michael moore, predatory capitalism, Resistance, squatting

By Rady Ananda

In Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore looks at the Wall Street bailouts – which the vast majority of citizens rejected (and Congress passed anyway) – and concludes that capitalism is a sin.

“We now have the highest unemployment rate since 1983. There’s a foreclosure filing once every 7.5 seconds. 14,000 people every day lose their health insurance,” he wrote in an email this morning. “Would Jesus be a capitalist? Would he belong to a hedge fund? Would he sell short? Would he approve of a system that has allowed the richest 1% to have more financial wealth than the 95% under them combined?”

In Mooresque fashion, he comically seeks to interview the CEOs responsible for today’s disastrous economy. He also interviews his priest, and then another, and then a Bishop. All decry capitalism as the most evil institution on the planet.

This graph prepared by VoltageCreative.com shows the enormity of the 2008 bankster bailout – which doesn’t include Obama’s 2009 bailout, comparing past government projects in present value dollars (for Nov. 2008):

Pie charts are to scale. Click for full-size image.

Moore then presents a few of the many alternatives to capitalism that can help us survive the crushing squeeze by deregulated banksters: Squatting, striking, developing employee-owned business, and (yes, he still believes in) voting.

“When you are in church this morning, please think about this. I am asking you to allow your ‘better angels’ to come forward. And if you are among the millions of Americans who are struggling to make it from week to week, please know that I promise to do what I can to stop this evil — and I hope you’ll join me in not giving up until everyone has a seat at the table.”

South Florida residents are revolting against home seizures by reclaiming foreclosed homes – through squatting. In August, Florida had the second highest foreclosure rate in the nation: one in 140 homes . Only Nevada was higher with one in 62 homes being stolen from people by conscienceless capitalists.

Three working adults on our street were unable to afford the balloon mortgage payments devious banks sold them under the criminal subprime lending scheme – made legal by deregulation. The Sheriff emptied their home.

Moore shows farms and inner city homes being seized – though these families have lived on their land for decades, and in some cases, for generations. Corporate propaganda will tell you that banks aren’t in the home ownership business, but they certainly are in the resale business. How lucky for them they can sell a piece of property and 40 years later claim ownership of it and sell it again.

One squatter organization in South Florida, Take Back the Land, assists people in reclaiming foreclosed property. But US Rep. Marcy Kaptur (Toledo, OH) insists homeowners should refuse to leave. “Make the bank produce the mortgage note,” she advises in the film. “They probably don’t have it.”

Indeed, in a recent court case, homeowners won a victory against a mortgage tracking service that lost its standing to foreclose. Ellen Brown writes:

“[T]he Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose – on 60 million mortgages. That is the number of American mortgages currently reported to be held by MERS.

“Over half of all new U.S. residential mortgage loans are registered with MERS and recorded in its name. Holdings of the Kansas Supreme Court are not binding on the rest of the country, but they are dicta of which other courts take note; and the reasoning behind the decision is sound.”

Moore has “come to believe that there is no getting around the fact that capitalism is opposite everything that Jesus (and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha) taught.” And the statistics bear this out.

The time has come for mass resistance, as Moore and others, encourage.