We need a new economic system because the old has failed. American Capitalism has failed so many people in so many ways. We need to transform our economy to one that works for the most people possible. We need a new form of capitalism.

What is the state of American capitalism today? As Professor James Galbraith has stated American capitalism is not what we are told by politicians, media or textbooks: benign competition leads to a greater good for most people. We are far from that. The defining feature of American capitalism today is predation – where a class of people – the oligarchs – feed off the demise of people not within this class. This oligarchy, or as Professor Galbraith calls them the predatory class, has control over the government and the capital in our economic system.

There are other features of American capitalism:

1) Financial sector that is too big.

In The New Yorker. James Surowicki claims:

Petit Julien welcomes you back to the Populist Pub.  

As a nation, we are groping for some sense of hope that we are emerging from the economic morass. The ranks of the unemployed continue to swell and millions of working Americans and retirees worry that the economic tsunami may engulf them next. The government has enacted a dizzying array of bailouts and assistance plans aimed at stabilizing the banking industry, thereby clearing a path to recovery in the real economy.

There is plenty of criticism for the government's actions to date, much of which is centered on understanding what brought on the crisis in the first place. Many critics attribute the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the 2000 enactment of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act as the impetus for the wreckless financial gambling of the last 8 years. For sure, this is not wrong and various measures of reform are now working their way through the Congressional process.

However, in an excellent article published in the April edition of Harper's Magazine, Thomas Geoghegan argues that we have not focused enough on the big deregulation that precedes all other deregulation. For him it was the day that America changed. His essay is titled: Infinite Debt; How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed The Economy.

On April 23, the Fed released audited financial statements which included financial statements from a few of the super “structured investment vehicles” that it created in 2008. The Fed called them “Special Purpose Vehicles”. Yeah, right, we know what “Special Purpose” means. Here’s a hint: giveaway. AIG and third-party counterparties to AIG's CDS received the largesse with Maiden Lane II & III. Just like Maiden Lane I, with a stroke of the pen tens of billions of dollars of “toxic assets” were lifted from AIG’s and other financial conglomerates’ balance sheets and transferred to the Fed’s balance sheet.

Background

Please note, that I am having trouble locating detailed financial statements for Maiden Lane II, LLC. The financial results have been consolidated onto the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s financials but the details were lacking.

The source of the problem is crystal clear - the banking bailouts are costing too much.

(Bloomberg) -- U.K. government support for the banking system has risen to 1.4 trillion pounds ($2 trillion) and may climb higher as the financial crisis spreads to building societies and economists warn lenders may need more aid.
The amount invested in, loaned to or pledged to back bank assets now equals Britain’s gross domestic product, or 22,800 pounds for every person in the U.K.

The amount of money spent propping up the British banking system is unprecedented, and unaffordable. There comes a time when this sort of deficit spending hits the wall, when the number of interested buyers simply runs out.