GRITtv: The F Word: Peace Without Victory For Working Class

Armistice Day reminds us that when wars end, the winners and losers are supposed to make peace. But this week also marked the ten-year anniversary of a different kind of war -- a war on Americans' assets and the poor. Ten years later, while the winners and losers are obvious, there's no armistice in sight. On November 12, 1999, after decades of banking deregulation, congress repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which up until that point had kept Main Street banks and commercial financial speculation apart. Glass-Steagall's repeal unleashed a wave of derivative marketing that rewarded shameless loan sharks for selling the most vulnerable Americans into a bubble of debt. The bubble having burst, now the stock market is up. Companies are reporting strong earnings and Wall Street's clearly at peace. But this week's news also brought US double-digit unemployment and regardless of those good earnings, the layoffs just don't stop; Sprint says it's cutting another 2,500 jobs; Pfizer, 2,000 jobs; even supposedly new and growing parts of the economy aren't growing -- software developer Adobe's cutting 6 percent of its workforce, game-maker Electronic Arts is cutting 1,500 jobs. And that's just this week. Winners and losers? You betcha.