While All the World Wondered . . .

(8:15PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

In Growing Anger in the Heartland, David Sirota writes:

A few months ago I appeared on Fox News and was told by “anchor” (hereby “cartoon character”) Greg Jarrett that “historians agree” that the New Deal exacerbated the Great Depression.  It was a statement so factually inaccurate that it approached insanity.  

Approached insanity?   Countless Friedman Units of full moons have come and gone since Republicans and their propagandists in the corporate media approached insanity.  They approached it long ago.  They went past it like it was standing still and have plunged into uncharted realms of lunacy so surreal and distant from human experience that psychologists can’t even begin to describe what the fuck is going on inside their thick skulls.

Sirota discussed Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero’s recent interview on FOX and observed that Bernero:

represents the boiling anger that’s roiling the country, and made a point that needs to be hammered over and over and over again over the din of Fox News cartoon characters–how can anyone with a straight face demand blue-collar workers take huge pay and benefit cuts at a time those workers’ tax dollars are subsidizing bonuses on Wall Street?  Part of the answer is that we live in a country whose ruling class is deeply insane.  Hardly a day goes by when you don’t see sociopathy packaged as Serious Opinion.

A typical example of this is Chase CEO John Dimon, who derided homeowners who are getting foreclosed on and declared “we should teach the American people, you’re supposed to meet your obligations, not run from them.”

I feel obligated to tell that highly paid hypocrite to shut the fuck up.  I also feel obligated to update him on the economic catastrophe he and his CEO friends on Wall Street are responsible for . . .  

Paul Volcker: Worse Than the Great Depression

Paul Volcker, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, cited not only the lack of understanding of the global financial meltdown but the “shocking” speed with which it had spread across the world.  “I don’t remember any time,” he said, “maybe even the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast.”

The banking system and economy are collapsing in record time, and there is no bottom in sight: George Soros: No Bottom for World Economic Collapse:

George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.  Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union..”We witnessed the collapse of the financial system.  It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support.  There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”

Who got us into this?

Men of wealth and taste, that’s who.

They’ve been around for a long, long year,

Stole many a man’s soul and faith.

And the food off his table, and the shirt off his back, and the roof over his head, over and over again since the days of Babylon, the days of Rome, the days of divine right monarchy.  They’re still stealing everything in sight, that’s what they do, that’s what they’ve always done, but it’s never called what it is, it’s called free market capitalism, investment banking, derivatives trading, free trade, globalization.  They call it everything but what it is–crimes against humanity.

So why does Barack’s Bailout Brigade keep riding to their rescue?  

Half a trillion, half a trillion,

Half a trillion onward,

All in the Valley of Bailouts,

Rode Obama’s six hundred.

Flash’d all their bailouts bare,

Flash’d as they turn’d in air,

Bailing out the bankers there,

Charging into the abyss,

While all the world wonder’d . . . why are those criminals being bailed out?  Why haven’t they all been arrested?

In America’s Financial Apocalypse 2009 Mike Stathis asks:

When will we see Fuld (Lehman Brothers), Thain (Merrill Lynch), Killinger (Washington Mutual), O’Neal (Merrill Lynch), Prince (Citigroup), Cayne (Bear Stearns), Schwartz (Bear Stearns), Dimon (JP Morgan), Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Thompson (Wachovia), Raines (Fannie Mae), Paulson (former U.S. Treasury), Greenspan (former Fed Chairman), Cox (former SEC Chairman), and hundreds if not thousands of others responsible for this mess in handcuffs?

Mike Stathis:

These men cleared billions of dollars in bonuses by fudging financial statements while packaging trillions of dollars of fraudulent loans into securities. This was money taken from shareholders who were lied to, and investors who bought these toxic securities.  It was a twist on the classic pump-and-dump scheme. In this case, CEOs pumped up revenues using outrageous assumptions, while hiding liabilities.

Then they collected their bonuses–millions of shares of company stock at inflated prices; prices they inflated.  Then they dumped these shares in the open market; to you and to your retirement plan.  They did this for several years.  Over the past four years alone, the financial industry paid out over $100 billion in bonuses to executives.  

Despite record losses of over $1.5 trillion from the banks alone (with at least another $2 trillion to go), most executives and all of the grunts that serve them have walked away with every penny.  It was theft, plain and simple. Yet, there have been no claw backs.  Where do you figure that money came from?  It came from your pockets.  It was the biggest heist in world history.

These guys are directly responsible for destroying the world economy.  Not only will they walk away unscathed, they’ll walk away wealthier than before, strengthening the precedent that white collar crime pays in America, as long as you work for big corporations; corporations with cozy relationships with Washington.  Without the fear of prosecution, CEOs will continue these scams over and over.