Well this post-capitalism capitalism is a grand thing, isn’t it. Privatize the profit, socialize the loss, and no matter what, make sure the hyperwealthy aren’t unduly taxed (or asked to serve in Iraq), for after all, they’re responsible for keeping this great financial engine running. (Cough! Cough! Sputter!.. .Wheeeeeeee! Crash!) Where would we be without hedge funds and their managers! One shudders to think! I mean, somebody has to play bridge and golf, don’t they??? Free up the magic market fairies! Deregulate! That’s what our great national poet Walt Whitman meant when he said
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
Thank God for the door-unscrewing Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan and the Reagan/Bush (hey, don’t forget Clinton!) revolutions, without which we might have had by now a decent health care system, peace, prosperity, a recovering (or never devastated) New Orleans, and some kind of plan to deal with the environmental and energy crises that threaten us all. Talk about bor-ring! How much more fun to do things the Greenspan/Cheney/Rove/Norquist/Dobson/Rumsfeld/Bush way! Imanentize the Eschaton, that’s what I say! Hasten the Coming! But whatever you do, don’t blame the rich (that’s “playing the class card”) or the Republicans (remember, whatever it is, it’s OK if you’re a Republican!) Just make sure that the Bear Stearns execs get a public-financed severance package in the reasonable seven figures (but not a dime more for the greedy limbless Iraq/Afghanistan vets who want to go to college–we’re not made out of money, you know!) Or in the words of Mungo Jerry,
If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal;
If her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel.
Life’s for living, that’s our philosophy!
Don’t forget the role of the D.C. Circuit and the Federalist Society generally, by pushing back regulation and jurisprudence to return us to the pre-New Deal “Gilded Age.”
You want the Gilded Age, you got it. The lows as well as the highs. Congress and the courts have spent the last 10 years rolling back New Deal era protections designed to moderate the business cycle and prevent another Great Depression-type crash.
Now, with Glass-Stegal and all the protections in the financial markets done away with as unnecessary and unduly restrictive, we are back in the middle of a bank panic. But, as with the Great Depression, because of the interconnectedness of the financial system, it is not limited to banks. It is all aspects of the financial markets.
the sad thing is I get the reality these bastards deserve.
Over on TPM, commenter <a href=”_bs_on_wall_st/#comment-2659359″ rel=”nofollow”>http://tpmcafe.talkingpoint…“>Dave Bowman</a> asks a pertinent question & makes a pertinent point:
”Aren’t these the same people who wanted our Social Security honeypot a few years ago?
Keep this in mind the next time they ask;>”
I don’t know if you guys caught this story. It’s an interesting postscript to this conversation:
http://www.gregpalast.com/e…