It’s Time to Do More Than Gripe to Each Other
I have written my congressman. OK, so maybe my one lone letter won’t change the world. But I realized I was talking up a storm about what was wrong in Washington, but not telling anyone who could do anything about it. I wrote my congressman telling him I wanted him to support the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act—it separated banking functions from investment functions.
The current lament from Wall Street is that doing so would hurt the economy. That would not be true. America functioned quite well, thank you, from 1933 to 1999 having banking and investing separated. Greed is the reason the bill was repealed, greed is the reason Wall Street is fighting it, and greed is the reason we are in the mess we are in globally. OK….[deep breath] I realize I am preaching to the choir here. So let me go back to writing my congressman.
I was feeling quite righteous about deciding to write my letter. But then, uh oh. Just who is my congressman?!?!? Now, in my defense let me say that I live in Richardson, but in Collin County and pay Plano school taxes, so I’m allowed some confusion here. But then I realized that people like me make it really easy for people in Washington to just keep on doing what they’ve been doing — we just don’t pay any attention!!
So now came the task of figuring out who my congressman was (and I certainly wasn’t going to ask anyone, admitting that I didn’t know!). When I was in the mood to write the letter, I did not have my voter registration card with me. That’s the easiest way to figure it out—see what district you are in then google it and—voilà! There you are. BUT, if you have no idea where your voter registration card is, then you can go to http://www.govtrack.us/congress. Type in your ZIP Code and press Go. Then you’ll have a link to your very own congressperson—mine happens to be a congressman.
It is important that you compose your letter in your own words. You don’t have to fully understand all matters financial to know that combining banking (taxpayer money) with investing (risking taxpayer money) is not good.
So if you are truly outraged at what is going on in Washington and Wall Street, I encourage you to do more than gripe to your friends. Tell your congressperson and vote when the time comes. None of this will be an easy fix, but it will never get fixed if rational people do nothing.
