Snarling bankers.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: Vox Populist - Column

Very few Americans on this side of the ATM machine think the biggest problem in Washington is that the moneychangers don't have enough clout. But, incredibly, here they come with a super PAC intended to force lawmakers to bow even deeper to their needs. "Congress isn't afraid of bankers," declared one of the honchos who organized the Friends of Traditional Banking super PAC. "They don't think we'll do any thing to kick them out of office," he said, but that's exactly the plan.

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Friends of Traditional Banking is not out to support candidates, but "to defeat our enemies," the group says. A Utah banker who chairs the new super PAC explains that giving $10,000 to the opponent of an incumbent who sides with the people has no impact. "But," he adds, "if you say the bankers are going to put ... $1 million into your opponent's campaign, that starts to draw some attention." He calls this a "surgical" approach to carving out political power.

Yeah--like doing surgery with a chainsaw and sledgehammer!

Thank you, Supreme Court, for making this crass money play possible with your plutocratic Citizens United decision.

But bankers don't throw their weight around only in terms of campaign contributions. Indeed, Woody Guthrie wrote a song titled "Jolly Banker," a perfect-pitch parody of the propensity of Depression-era bankers to feel good about gouging their small borrowers.

If you show me you need it,

I'll let you have credit, I'm a jolly banker, jolly banker am I.

Just bring me back two for the one I lend you,

Singin' I'm a jolly banker, jolly banker am I.

Woody's song could also apply to the gouging we're getting from today's national chain banks (the very ones that have a super PAC) except the song's title should be "Snarling Banker." Only a couple of years ago, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and others were quite jolly because they were piling up mountains of profits through such sneaky schemes as secretly enrolling customers in checking accounts that charged up to $35 a pop for every overdrawn check, then rigging the flow of checks so unwitting customers would be overdrawn.

Public outrage exploded, especially because only a year earlier, We the People had bailed out these same banks. Thus, Congress outlawed some of the worst gouges. This pinched...