Devon DB: America's Internal Colonialism!

Colonialism is a word associated with the 19th and 20th centuries, with an outside force, usually European coming into a country, destroying and uprooting the culture and people, with the main goal being the extraction of resources for the gain of the mother country. It is defined as the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. Yet this definition of colonialism can be expanded from examining the external to examining the internal. For what may be the first time in US history, internal colonialism is occurring as the very facades of democracy and the economic system begin to fall apart, and the elites begin to colonize internally. The internal colonization of America by elites ca be seen most starkly in the financial sector, specifically in the 2007-2009 economic crisis, the effects of which are still being felt. There was mass panic about the near global economic collapse, which allowed financial corporations to convince the government to bail them out to the tune of $12.8 trillion. Yet, once the dust cleared, the very banks that caused the crisis in the first place only grew larger. Bloomberg noted in April of this year that Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup had combined assets that amounted to 43 percent of US output in 2007, but after the crisis, those same banks now held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the US economy, meaning that their combined percentage of the economy had increased by thirteen percent. While the near collapse of the economy led to large amounts of growth for the banks, and massive bonuses, it had a devastating impact on average Americans. While one can generalize about the number of jobs and houses lost, it is much more telling to look at the actual numbers.