Dear Arthur,
A few nights ago I
watched Frontline's "Money, Power and Wall Street."
Episode 1 begins
with background on Wall Street's collapse and the collapse of the real
estate market.
Both economic craters were
deliberately dug by the vicious Cowboy
Capitalists who now rule the
roost.
I use the word
"vicious" in its original sense: i.e., relating to attitudes and
behaviors rooted in personal vice.
The first twelve minutes of "Money and Power" are slow-going. It is a slog to
detail predatory capitalism's
calculated Collapse deliberately induced by the creation of complex (and
willfully worthless) "financial instruments" - investments so byzantine
that only a few of the predators could descry the demon they'd
conjured.
In essence, America's economic Collapse was
guaranteed by the creation of unregulated, "in house" financial
"products" whose operation was so obscure, so void of legal
responsibility, and so hidden from regulatory view that a toxic stew of Self-Imposed
Benightedness and Bewildering Complexity became
fertile ground for greed, envy, pride, "lust" and "gluttony."
These "deadly sins"
propelled America to predictable ends - the destruction of people and
institutions (Democracy not least among them). http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/ayn-rand-atheist-cornerstone-of-tea.html
Despite "Money and Power's" slow start, the story soon shifts to
"high drama" when, of a sudden, it becomes clear that "the
center no longer holds and things fall apart."
Foundational to America's Undoing -- as well as the linchpin error made by Wall Street's "best and brightest" -- was the insane belief that risk can be
"subdivided, packaged and sold" so that eventually, with enough
"massaging" and enough "sub-division," risk can be
eliminated - like dust motes blown by wind. (The Big
Boys-and-Girls call this minute sub-division "tranching." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranche)
Fascism distills to the
desire to make reality safer than God-Universe intended it to be.
Under aegis of eliminating risk, fascists -- be
they political or economic -- concoct "systems" that lure "the
unwitting" with promises of fail-safe "security." (Ever wonder
why they call stocks "securities?")
In Episode 2, free-marketeer
"Hank" Paulson invokes "moral hazard" to justify
"letting banks fail" - in particular Lehman Brothers.
Paulson was cut from the same
cloth as Obama Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner. Like Geithner Hank is a
Wall Street "graduate." Both men suck the teat of financialization.
In the last twenty years, the
financial service industry overtook industrial production, then
doubled industrial production.
In comparison with sheer
high-rolling speculation now typical of Wall Street, the actual
production of necessary goods-and-services is increasingly secondary to The Bull's operation.
Currently, placing
wagers on bizarre, computer-driven games-of-chance is immeasurably more
attractive to American financiers than nuts-and-bolts productivity. Those clients who
were formerly the sole focus of Wall Street are now held in contempt. They are mere "marks" to be sold the same financial vomitus that Wall Street firms then bet against. In the proud parlance of high finance, traders talk about
"ripping a client's face off." http://www.duffminster.com/times/node/810
Money and Power's third episode spotlights
Geithner persuading Obama NOT to re-regulate the financial industry.
And so, the implicit
extortion of "Too Big To Fail" remains as dangerous as ever.
Remarkably, Episode 3 notes that America's top five banks have sequestered more
wealth since The Collapse than they controlled before The Collapse.
Flabbergastingly, The Big Five are
now responsible for fifty six percent (56%) of all financing in the
"United" States.
Already, the nation's big
banks (encouraged by Geithner-Obama's unconditional exculpation) have resumed
the same reckless practices that caused The
Bush Breakdown. High-rolling financiers were not even slightly chastened and
therefore are eager to resume the "killings" of yesteryear.
If this top-heavy condition
continues, America will either endure an unprecedented Depression, or, we will
have definitive proof, not only that God exists but that Deity is eager to intervene - miraculously - to save us from ourselves.
Paulson's decision to let
Lehman Brothers fail catapulted markets toward economic
paralysis.
Glimpsing this horror, Paulson immediately dumped his "free market" principles, TELLING Bush,
TELLING bankers, and TELLING Congress that everything
would go to hell (in the
literal sense of the word) unless the United States immediately bailed the
banks, the same organizations that first created, then swallowed, so much
financial excrement that The
System had to be put on life support, or very soon The Great Depression would
seem a banner day on Wall Street.
There are few people I hold
in such low esteem as Wall Street's predatory capitalists.
It is also no secret that I
advocate strict legislation (in the spirit of Glass-Steagall) to prevent
corporations "Getting Too Big To Fail." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_steagall
Specify precise "size
thresholds" and - when exceeded - oblige corporations to spin off
"sub-divivions" just as AT&T was required to spin off "The
Baby Bells." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System_divestiture
Not only would obligatory
sub-division be smart prophylaxis, it would give tremendous boost to
competitive capitalism.
Without courting regression
to some neo-Dark Age (an eventuality not yet ruled out), Paulson's decision to
"bail" the banks was the only way to prevent economic
quadriplegia.
As you know, the 750 billion
dollar Wall Street bailout was enacted by George W. Bush.
Less well known is that Bush
surrendered Total Policy Control to Paulson, authorizing him
to do whatever he thought necessary.
The reins were given to
Paulson only after Bush's advisors informed him that "free markets"
were no longer working.
This bleak message was
delivered to Dubyah while he was dressing for a nationally broadcast speech whose
purpose was to reassure the nation that "free market mechanisms would soon
solve the crisis."
In his fine memoir,
"Speech Less" -- http://www.amazon.com/Speech-less-Tales-White-House-Survivor/dp/0307463729 -- Bush
speechwriter, Matthew Latimer, describes that fateful day when a phalanx of
sheepish capitalists arrived at the White House to tell the president that nothing
short of massive federal intervention could prevent national and global
economies from cratering.
And if they cratered, they
would void everyone's net worth.
Without immediate
intervention on a scale never before imagined, The Economic End Time would
make all previous hardship look like A Day in the Park.
"Money, Power and Wall Street" is the perfect bookend to "Inside Job," the 2010 Oscar-winning documentary that is freely streamable at http://vimeo.com/23086688
***
The bipartisan authors of "It’s Even Worse Than It Looks" point out that Congress is now paralyzed by ideological
posturing because many American (perhaps a majority) will not (and "existentially" can not) contemplate The
Facts - http://www.npr.org/2012/04/30/151522725/even-worse-than-it-looks-extremism-in-congress
///
Again, American ideologues in the tradition of Ayn Rand -- http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/ayn-rand-atheist-cornerstone-of-tea.html -- will not (and probably can not) bring themselves to
examine "Money, Power and
Wall Street" and "Inside Job" because once they set aside their straight-jacket, they confront the same metanoiac choice Paulson faced when - after glimpsing the abyss
by "letting Lehman die" - he turned his back on Too
Pure Principles to accommodate the inexorable demands of Reality.
Pax on both houses,
Alan
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Practicing Christian and free market Republican, Joe Heim, reverses position on Global Warming.
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