The most provocative, over the top, and disturbing take on what has befallen us appears in the latest Rolling Stone. Sometimes the truth is so close we can’t recognize it, and a writer like Matt Taibbi comes along to piece everything together into sharp focus:
The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
But are his big-picture conclusions beyond doubt? Or has he jammed together stuff that doesn’t really fit? Most airtight and compelling is his dissection of how we arrived at this point: the game was rigged with the complicity of our lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike. On this the facts appear indisputable.
Read “The Big Takeover,” every one of its nearly nine thousand words. When I finished, my view of the nation, its predicament, and future had shifted in the most dire way.
How Congress responds to the Obama administration’s call today for sweeping reform of financial institutions will test whether Taibbi is right.
UPDATE: No one can say we weren’t warned when Congress created the road to our financial ruin.
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Thanks for the links, I found the whole subject amazing and disturbing.
That article has made me furious, mostly because I believe what was written.
I’d love to see Joe Cassano rot in jail forever. As well as Phil Gramm of course who is a primo scumbag. Grrrrrrr. Maybe we should keep Gitmo up and running for people like that who are the real traitors.
The problems are fourfold – 1. America has a new Govt – but nothing has changed. 2. The financiers and finance institutions of the world have no responsibility to anyone but themselves. 3. No financier has ever been charged with fraud, as they should be. 4. No regulatory authority or people in those regulatory authorities, have ever been charged with dereliction of duty, as they should be.
The overarching problem is that the U.S. finance system has destroyed itself from within by corporate greed. It no longer serves the proper purpose for which it was designed – to be a store of value and confidence, and to replace the barter system.
It is now a self-serving elephant in the room that demands more and more feed daily, or it will trample the feeders (the long-suffering taxpayers).
It needs someone with large cojones and an elephant gun to shoot it, and to get a new animal that performs precisely on request, without the demands for feed, that the feeders can’t keep up with.
I don’t know who that person is – but it sure as hell ain’t Obama, the money moguls appointee.
Thanks for commenting, Ron. I’ve pretty much reached your point of view. I have been and remain a big Obama fan. But I’m increasingly disappointed with his lack of aggressiveness in tackling fundamental reform and going too easy on the Lords of Finance. His key appointees are part of that pack. I assumed he chose them for their expertise. They have been expert — at going soft. Obama would have incredible support if he was much tougher on this front.