The Big Takeover

I’ve been saying/thinking this for a bit, and I feel a little relief to see someone more ‘mainstream’ voice concerns about the level and intent of bailouts, the intended recipients and the ultimate point of capitalism.

Yes, we’re at that moment where it’s now time to wonder if we’re entering a game-changing period era (not month, year or couple of days like the Cons might want you to believe).

If that’s the case, why the f**k are we giving a penny to a group of companies and ‘captains of industry’ who don’t know their asses from a hole in my wallet unless, of course, it’s all intentional?

The Rolling Stone piece titled "The Big Takeover" is long, but well worth the read.  The conclusions helped me and my limited attention span:

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren’t hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.

The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.

"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what’s left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?" (ED Editor:  I added the bold)

But before you even finish saying that, they’re rolling their eyes, because You Don’t Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they’re on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.

Good luck with that, America. And enjoy tax season.

If you’re into something a little shorter that has pretty much the same point, check out this piece from Salon .

A spin on what they advise: all the Facebook pages in the world won’t save us from this gluttony. It’s time for action.