The financial oligarchs are in the process of destroying this country, just as they destroyed their own institutions. At the moment, there is nothing more pressing than restructuring these power drunkards. Letting them restructure themselves using our money is a classic conflict-of-interest-infested recipe for disaster. Please tell me we're not this stupid.
Listen to what former IMF economist and MIT professor Simon Johnson has to say to Bill Moyers on this topic.
http://www.pbs.org/...
BILL MOYERS: Oligarchy is an un-American term, as you know. It means a government by a small number of people. We don't like to think of ourselves that way.
SIMON JOHNSON: It's a way of governing. As you said. It comes from, you know, a system they tried out in Greece and Athens from time to time. And it was actually an antithesis to democracy in that context.
But, exactly what you said, it's a small group with a lot of power. A lot of wealth. They don't necessarily - they're not necessarily always the names, the household names that spring to mind, in this kind of context. But they are the people who could pull the strings. Who have the influence. Who call the shots.
BILL MOYERS: Are you saying that the banking industry trumps the president, the Congress and the American government when it comes to this issue so crucial to the survival of American democracy?
SIMON JOHNSON: I don't know. I hope they don't trump it. But the signs that I see this week, the body language, the words, the op-eds, the testimony, the way they're treated by certain Congressional committees, it makes me feel very worried.
Unlike many of Team Obama's financial retreads, lobbyists, and strikeout artists who got us into this mess, Johnson is one of a saner, more prudent variety of economic centrists who calls for mark to market pricing of assets, FDIC interventions, and wholesale break-up and re-selling of these financial frauds. The stakes could not be higher.
Listen to what Gerald Celente predicts:
I know this is a distinctly minority opinion in these parts, but I'm feeling a lot of fail coming from team Obama on this issue and many other issues. Everything is looking like a lot of the same old special-interest-dominated shit.
Give him time? We don't have time. We sure don't have the money. This place is collapsing around our ears.
Obama needs to can the Summers-Geithner-Rubin carrying capacity-denying bubble boys of the unlimited growth religion, cap some arrogant CEOs in the ass, let the market forces bring housing down to where it belongs, do a real stress test on the banks and let them fail if necessary, and otherwise quit throwing our money into their rat holes.
He might also consider some Plan B contingencies, just in case his Wunderkinder botch things, as they are wont to do.
He might also pull the plug on phony war on terror and prosecute some folks for flagrant criminal activity.
I'm not hopeful. By now, I'm quite used to predicting disaster and then watching it unfold. It's like a regular effing occupation in this country, except it doesn't pay the bills.