Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Financial Industry Runs America

The big banks are handing out obscene compensation packages just one year after they damned near pulled down the entire world economy with their greed, incompetence, and borderline criminality. Kevin Drum is rightfully incredulous:


I sort of feel like I've run out of things to say about this. There's an insanity here that's almost beyond analysis. Wall Street can spark an economic slowdown that misses destroying the planet and causing a second Great Depression only by a hair's breadth — said hair being an 11th hour emergency infusion of trillions of taxpayer dollars — and then turn around and use those trillions to return to bubble levels of profitability within 12 months. And they can do it even though the rest of the economy is still suffering through the worst recession since World War II. It's mind boggling.

Big Finance's lobbyists are so powerful that nothing is likely to be done about any of this, and the banks will be allowed to once again go their merry way without restraint.

And you wonder why I get so bent out of shape.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think we should have single payer health care. In fact, all industries that sell commodities should be nationalized, i.e steel, oil, food distribution, education, utilities, mining, airlines, farming, insurance in all forms, and banking. If you sell a comodity, why should you profit from it? Only those companies that do something unique should be able to profit from it and only if it is something that we do not need to live. Capitalism is slavery. Greed is bad.

Joseph Miller said...

Anon, I agree about Single Payer. I don't agree with the rest of your statement. REGULATED capitalism is the way to go, IMHO.

eduorgresist said...

Nationalizing industry is absurd. Industry needs to be democratized, and government seems to be the greatest impediment to democracy right now.