The panic of the plutocrats

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized…

---Paul Krugman. The Panic of the Plutocrats.

Comments

[Ken Muldrew]

Is it too late to nationalize the banks? It's unamerican, sure, but that's not such a bad thing, these days.

[Earl Bockenfeld]

Investment bankers put a system in place right out in the open, with the thinnest of veils and with political encouragement of both flavors, elephant with donkey assistance. a system that had the effect of making "bad loans more valuable than good loans". More valuable to the bankers that is. the call went out across the country, "Ye mortgage bankers, ye mortgage brokers, bring us bad loans", and the call was answered, oh boy was it answered.

Hundreds of billions of dollars of profits were created from nothing. Created by a loose conspiracy resting on the simple and obvious corruption of the rating agencies and the security insurance businesses. The rating agencies were (and still are) bidding for business using AAA ratings as a carrot. They justified the high ratings by pointing to the insurance that they knew to be worthless. straight up whores they were (and still are). The security insurance businesses like AIG simply and knowingly made promises they couldn't keep. Knowingly on both sides of the transaction. they could use fake transactions to evade minimum capital requirements and to allow stratospheric leverage with financial instruments based on their wizards' ability to turn turds into tiaras. Tiaras that turn out to be hidden, and are only visible to robo-signers that are required to sign legal documents about which properties are/not in foreclosure. Part of the fraud is no one has the signed note about the original house loan with the signatures of the lending institution and the home buyer, as has always existed as a recorded title in our real estate history. The Title Search Insurance is the only proof of who owns property that is free and clear in a court of law, and who doesn't.

That in a nutshell is it, and it would have worked out great forever except that the investment bankers were lying about everything. They made a bunch of money fraudulently, crashed the economy, got bailed out by the society they had so damaged and are now making a bunch of money fraudulently on the down side. What's not to like? Back in his day, Bill Black got felony convictions on over 1,000 senior insiders who committed white collar crime in the Savings & Loan scandal. And then there were only 3,000 S&Ls! And if you think corruption was rampant back then, hear him describe it now. He says our financial system is absolutely loaded with fraud, corruption and rot. And what have our regulators done? Apart from a very few miniscule prosecutions for widespread public display, absolutely nothing. They are 100% complicit in the corruption.

The asshole GOP reps who banked millions in campaign contributions from the banksters in exchange for selling out the American people are now the same ones crying "class warfare". Time for some stronger measures. Hell somebody get a rope, or lets convicts them for killing the housing market and smashing the economy and send them down for a little Perry's Texas justice, we keep hearing about.