One can make the argument that the more things change, the more that they remain the same, for when it comes to money trusts, collusion, monopolies, and things of that general ilk, this is absolutely true. The Pujo Congressional Committee was created back in 1912, and was specifically structured to investigate the money trusts of that day, which included the very powerful J.P. Morgan banking interests as well as others, and thereby Congress was concerned about the undue influence that money held in the hands of the few was thus serving to exert an undue influence upon corporation business and other areas of import, for the expressed benefit of those money trusts, which subsequently led to the passage of the Clayton Anti-trust Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and ultimately to the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which implemented the federal income tax. The bottom line is that well over one hundred years ago, the government of this nation recognized that having too much power in the hands of private banking enterprises would subvert our democratic principles and would make for a country in which the superrich and elite would effectively control it for their own benefit.
When we fast forward to the present time, it has to be acknowledged that never have so few had so much as we see when it comes to wealth, and of which, it would appear that our present governance has effectively been captured by those same elites. In fact, one could argue that government at the highest level is being run by those elites for the benefit of those elites, which is why we have a government that insists upon running massive deficits because it will not tax appropriately the superrich who are accumulating more and more wealth at the expense of everyday Americans, which will ultimately result in nationwide instability when that reckoning of fiscal irresponsibility so comes.
The very point of the Pujo Committee was to make the necessary changes so as to reform that which was inimical to the principles of this government. Regrettably, when it comes to money and power, those that have it, do not ever desire to relinquish such, and when they have been outplayed, they are going to do their level best, to get back what they were subject to losing by such robust legislation, so that those who are not eternally vigilant are the same that will find that though the legislation so passed was well meaning, that the overall effect has not serve the purpose as effectively as envisioned and proposed.
Today, we need a new Pujo Committee that will have the courage to stand and to uphold the principles of this great nation on behalf of the people of this nation, but this seems to be something that is going to be hard to achieve, for the power of the press, and of the judicial, and of the mega corporations, and of the biggest banks, seems to be so consolidated that nothing can conceivably bring them down. Yet, this is what needs to happen, or else this country will be divided into the very few and privileged who rule the roost and are above the law, thereby effectively eviscerating the common man and thereby nullifying this government, of, for, and by the people.