Will we have to blow up a continent again before we stop Wall Street?
Surprise, surprise: Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece, Spain, Portugal, and undermined the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.
What can government do? Bankers own the place.
“The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government – a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation; recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.” ~ The Atlantic Monthly, May 2009, by Simon Johnson
Where there is no accountability from governments for blatant fraud and financial barbarism, people will improvise.
Without commenting on whether such “blowback” is right or wrong (if the JP Morgan event is indeed blowback), it’s entirely predictable. Fuck people over enough and they will retaliate by the means and opportunities at their command. How many times have we not learned that lesson?
Of course, would-be retaliators should realize that TPTB have terrorism laws firmly on their side, and accountability is a one-way street.
I expect to see a lot more of this type of thing if the out-of-control banks are not saddled and reined-in.
13 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
and someone posted that a bomb went off today at JP Morgan in Athens. Don’t mess with those Greeks.
Now if we were not so meek and mind here, perhaps we could get something done without having to turn to violence.
Bomb goes off at JP Morgan offices in Athens
By Renee Maltezou
16 Feb 2010 18:17:54 GMT
ATHENS, Feb 16 (Reuters) – A bomb exploded outside the JP Morgan offices in Athens on Tuesday, causing minor damage to the building, police said.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
“It was a time-bomb at JP Morgan’s offices in central Athens,” a police official said. “The explosion damaged the outside door and smashed some windows.”
The official said police cordoned off the area after a local newspaper had received a warning call.
bobswern publishes an economics diary which is always worth the read.
One can hope.
I don’t think so. A continent as pristine as any old world
dreamer could imagaine, stretching West forever. [And let’s just imagine for a moment that it wasn’t brutally stolen] Where justice and the rule of law was to prevail over this gift of the ages, a utopia of possibility, with only greed standing in its way.
I recall the scathing cartoons of Peter Bruegel The Elder right around the time of the Roanoke failure, when “New World fever” was at its incipient phase, ready to burst onto the scene for generations to come. But as Peter looked around at the politics of avarice, one gets the feeling (through his drawings) that the human condition is still quite pitifully unevolved (for lack of a better term).
The “look” of our government today, 2010, as far as the “Novus ordo Seclorum” is concerned, is a massive failure. The ancient and medieval drives for gold and power have reasserted themselves, and the testing ground for Democracy (The U.S.) is on life support. IMHO, the simple failure of the “golden rule” to guide the “rule of law” is the cause. Truths can be “self evident”, but unless words are put into action, nothing much can take place.
e.g. When Obama declared healthcare reform a moral imperative, and then acted like it was simply a matter of political “give and take”, we saw the true nature of our present circumstances. It’s like the espiritu being sucked out of the soul, or the spinal cord ripped out of the body. Look at these people. They speak for themselves.