Shorter: We are the new Robber Barons and it is our God given right to make obscene profits after a structured dismantling of all reasonable controls.

2 words: Fairness Doctrine. It's our only hope.

"Conservatives, who somehow claim to be economic populists, are on board with all of this, and the electorate, which is presumably livid with Wall Street, is poised to reward the political party that stands with those who brought the global system to the brink of collapse, and reject efforts to prevent another crisis."

Exactly!

One would expect a little less hubris here. After all if this had been 1789 these "masters of the universe" would have had their heads on pikes outside the stock exchange as a warning to other presumptious bankers not to mess with the system.

meanwhile

what I tell you three times is true:

The stimulus worked and prevented another Republican created Great Depression. Hank Paulson said so himself on NBC on Sunday morning. when the Republican say it did not workm they are lieing. They have followed the advice of Vladimer Lenin who said that, "A lie told often enough becomes truth"

The stimulus worked and prevented another Republican created Great Depression. Hank Paulson said so himself on NBC on Sunday morning. when the Republican say it did not workm they are lieing. They have followed the advice of Vladimer Lenin who said that, "A lie told often enough becomes truth"

The stimulus worked and prevented another Republican created Great Depression. Hank Paulson said so himself on NBC on Sunday morning. when the Republican say it did not workm they are lieing. They have followed the advice of Vladimer Lenin who said that, "A lie told often enough becomes truth"

And the floodgates were opened by the Bank of America presents The Supreme Court. When we bailed out the banks, we simply financed our mutually assured destruction.

How long, I wonder before people wise up, and the slave morality takes full hold and the People march upon JPMC, BoA and Cit with brickbats and molotov cocktails? Or will they be mollified and anesthatized by Youtube videos of funny cats.

"It's quite a system we have here."

You have the most evil 'system' in the world. Your God is Capitalism. Money. Your whole system is now one of Corporate Control of every aspect of your reality, including your Fascist Government that is 'owned' by your Corporations. And, of course, the root principle in your Corporate Capitalism is making as much money as possible for the Corporations. This equals pure GREED. And that Greed leads directly to self interest of those within these Corporate Structures. And greed generated by capitalist self interest breeds EVIL.

Thus, you end up with a 'system' that will destroy anything that gets' in it's way of making profits for these Corporations. The Corporations by the Souls of everyone in order to make money for themselves. Anyone who tries to 'reform' the system will be destroyed.

Your country is in indeed evil because of the worshiping of the God called Corporate Capitalism. It allows a person to die every twelve minutes because they don't have health insurance. It allows another 12,000 per day to loose their worthless 'health insurance' every day. It allows corporate pimps like Brian Williams to make 15 million a year while the teachers of your children make about 30,000 a year. It allows less that 1/2 percent of your citizens to control and over 95 percent of your total wealth. It allows the Corporate Masters to create a defacto system of and Indentured Society to those masters.

Your 'system' has caused a global financial crisis because of the evil greed of your god of Corporate Capitalism. Your evil country is a disgrace to this planet. It is like a malignant tumor. Your country and it's 'system' are in a death spiral and your citizens are to stupid to know it. The average 'citizen' of your country is either morbidly obese, and fat. They are stupid. As the destruction of your 'system' and country is underway the average citizen of your country simply grunts, turns on American Idol, and reaches for yet another hamburger.

My macroeconomics is sketchy, but improving.

Here's the outline I'm working with:

Banks use leverage (borrowing a spitload of cash at 0% to invest in and pump up prices of investment vehicles (stocks, real estate, commodities, what have you and maybe even loan a little out to the great unwashed unworthy of their risk at 6-30% depending.

Profits that come in pad salaries and bestow bonuses on bubble inflaters. Bank accounts of Republican supporters swell.

Value of investment vehicles collapse under the weight of supply and demand, Ponzi-style and massive amounts of cash get forked over to same banks which use them to consolidate by buying each other out so banks get even bigger and cannot be allowed to fail. Pay the cash back or not, part of the money stays in executives' hands rewarding them for having perpetuated this bubble. Money supply increases, but none of it is in circulation, so inflation stays low, even as prices of investment vehicles stay steady of increase due to 0% financing.

Monster inflation MIGHT be a result. Ultimate goal: $20 for a loaf of bread and a population selling their daughters for bankers' harems. I'm not sure they are aware of this goal, but if they learned, I'm not sure they'd do anything to avoid it.

Alternative outcome? The French Revolution is a possibility. At $20 for a loaf of bread, cake has to be cheap, right? Perhaps here in America, 80% estate tax and 50% short term capital gains will take the place of the guillotine. Equal outrage to both measures will be bandied about by the modern bourgeois.

It's quite a system we have here.

It's called American Journalism. On the one hand, we have an unapologetic far-right propaganda machine, and on the other hand, a very apologetic timid bunch of shiny object followers trying to balance what can't be balanced.

Good luck with that, Democracy.

"When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
- Sinclair Lewis

If Repugnants score big in Nov, leading us to the threshold of a deluge of nihilism, it may be because their calculated efforts to traumatize the politics of our society with the classic twofer of our country's history: racism and classism will triumph. Of course, complicit in that is the timidity of the Dims in every way, shape and form...

I went Wall Street free. I am not going any where near those bat chit crazy fools. If the republicans and blue dogs support it then I know for sure that it will turn to crap. They have no standards.

Democrats need to show populist balls by taking away lower cap gains tax rates, instituting trading percentage tax, and so on. Will they? The GOP is diabolical but pussies and compromisers can't fight them.

Blue hits one out of the park!!

My feelings, exactly!!

There will be no proletariat uprising in AmeriKKKa, the CorPirate Fascists have won, it's only a matter of time before the skin-head militias become the "private " police force of out neighborhoods, we return to slavery and child labor.

20 years, we will be there.

I scare myself with these visions, I wish they would stop coming true.......

Only $30k!?!?

Damn, Republicans can be bought for lunch money.

It hurts to read, but blue writes truth.

I thought we left England to escape just this kind of tyranny, establishing America?

Yet here we are, re-creating that which we supposedly despise. Neo-feudalism.

This sounds a lot like the infamous Southern Strategy. Find a demographic that feels persecuted by a democratic sense of fairness, and use it to return to power.

The only way to fight this is to organize a massive consumer boycott of JPM and the like. Close accounts, rip up credit cards, etc., and you will get their attention fast.

And the Dems need more Elizabeth Warren-ish politicians, then they have a better chance of winning more seats in November...

Warren in today's WSJ:
"J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently explained this brave new world, saying that crises should be expected "every five to seven years. He is wrong. New laws that came out of the Great Depression ended 150 years of boom-and-bust cycles and gave us 50 years with virtually no financial meltdowns. The stability ended as we dismantled those laws and failed to replace them with new laws that reflected modern business practices."

I sure hope this didn't come as a surprise to Democratic leadership. They shouldn't be counting on any more money from the financial service industry and should see it as a positive.

They need to use this chain of events as bludgeon to beat the GOP senseless. "Corporate whore" is an apt description, but you got to challenge the rightwing "populists" on this rank hypocrisy. If we're not aggressive enough, it will go under the radar.

Obama could take back the narrative if instead of going against "Wall Street Fat Cats," -- i.e., all of them -- the effort is intended to allow otherwise responsible companies to compete by preventing the unscrupulous ones from enforcing a destructive race to the bottom. This, I believe, was the central premise of James Galbraith's The Predator State -- that in the absence of sound rules-of-the-road, the dirty players force everyone to engage in shoddy practices as a matter of survival.

Seems to me we saw vivid proof of that in this financial crisis, what with ninja loans and the like. Even the repeal of Glass-Steagall was sold by Summers on this premise, as I recall: that we needed all this financial "innovation" for our financial industry to compete with Europeans.

So let the opponents of reasonable regulation be pushed into a corner. They are not protecting the industry from over-zealous regulators, but are showing that they want to lead the way in dishonest practices.

What happened to the vaunted communicators who won an election against all odds? Now they seem unable completely to take command of the narrative -- or even to set a good narrative tone in the first place. That's what happens, I suppose, when an avowed centrist who seems to be in charge believes that appealing to independents (1) should be the end-all and be-all of policy formulation, and (2) requires all differences in governing philosophy between Democrats and Republicans to be split down the middle.

Time to take the rest of my moneyh out of Chase's Bank. I hope others will follow.

Re: blue's rant @ 10:41 AM.

First, learn to spell.
Secondly, get a grip! Or at least a bottle of Pepto Bismol.
Finally, you have enumerated many of the problems facing the US; how about a suggestion or two for solving them? I know thinking requires more effort than simply regurgitating stale Marxist talking points (down to the capitalization, even), but still..?
Inquiring minds want to know.