Bailout Fallout

While political leaders may be correct in gauging the necessity of the financial bailout, very little is being said about culpability. Some of this restraint is undoubtedly due to the fact that the very same people who are telling us this are in some way responsible or connected via campaign contributions, lobbyist connections, legislative machinations, or any or all of the above. Additional restraint may stem from trying to avoid blowback from talking about blame within a campaign framework. Regardless, the obvious empty space in the vacuum of media coverage of this story seems odd, artificial, and eerie. It's another one of the many elephants in the room that our culture refuses to acknowledge.

But acknowledge this one we must, just as we must call out peak oil and global heating. Those responsible for this financial crisis must be fully identified and their specific misdeeds accounted for. I remember a poster that hung on my wall from the Watergate scandal when I was a kid that had pictures of all of the perpetrators from Nixon and Haldeman on down to the actual burglers. That's what we need here, a poster of all of the Wall Street star chamber hot shots, corporate CEO's, Senators, Congressmen, administration appointees from Treasury, SEC, Federal Reserve, etc., etc. all the way up to the President. And in this sense, McCain may be right, a special commission or special prosecutor like Archibald Cox should be appointed and given full authority to sort things out and assess responsibilities, in both the public and private sectors.

At this point, and after determining how much money had been made on this house of cards, this ponzi scheme, perhaps we initiate the largest transfer of wealth in the Nation's history. Every individual and corporation that benefited from this vast system of greed-inspired theft (and, as is not being discussed, many technically legal acts of wealth accumulation are certainly amoral or immoral) should be stripped of assets and have them redistributed to poor trusting souls whose pensions were raided, homes foreclosed on due to fine print, or investments zeroed out due to corruption or mismanagement...nearly all of us. Then, in all of their glorious new found poverty, we should parade them to the stocks for a few days of public display, and then a trial that would make OJ look like C-Span. Other ideas could include scarlet letters on foreheads, special license plates, web site or newspaper glory, or putting them to work on streets, roads, and sewers.

Yes, I know these things are not going to happen. Why? Because you, we, are not mad enough. I don't see the anger that I expect to see over a taxpayer screwing of epic proportions. A bailout that will probably result in strapping the Federal agenda for decades or more. This may threaten Social Security, Medicare, the National Park System, FTA, Amtrak, and much, much more. The Feds may decide to sell assets like national forests, wilderness areas, historic buildings, and also may close departments like Soil Conservation or NOAA. You are seeing the very justification for the shrinkage that will allow drowning in a bathtub. Call it Norquist's Folly. Should we institute regulatory reform and place greater safeguards, rules, and oversight on capital markets? What we had a couple of decades ago was pretty good actually but we decided to unleash the power of unbridled Capitalism. Happy with the result?

The anger that should have been evident when the falsehood of the Iraq war was revealed should also be emerging now. Your wealth was squandered and looted, your government and the taxes you paid are going to pay for the misdeeds of laughing, champagne toasting Ivy League business school miscreants who think they pulled off the biggest train robbery in World history and they were right. They're money is already sitting in a Zurich bank, ready to buy the new Alloy Yacht.

When sizing this all up, assuming you're not mad as hell and are not going to take it any more, let me leave you with one final thought. The block party that was Wall Street's two flame outs over the past 28 years requiring two massive bailouts (see RTC in Wikipedia), roughly covered the period where we first recognized our oil dependency under President Carter, when global heating became apparent (at least to scientists not on the take), and the global peak oil concept was beginning to make the rounds. Imagine what we could have done with the public and private money to research alternative energy and build a more sustainable society. Throw in the trillion or more for Iraq and if you're not shaking mad now like I am, you're on a slab. You need to be able to tell your grandchildren that you at least tried to do something.....start now.