I just read an extraordinary NYTimes article. Digby also has weighed in on it here.
Let me see if I have this straight: last autumn Hanky Paulson came to Congress to beg, plead, extol Congress to give him $750 billion RIGHT NOW, this minute, no questions asked, or the American economy as we know it would cease to exist. Congress with some reservations but few restrictions, gave him the money.
Most of it disappeared.
Along with lots more billions given by this administration.
And a few more billions to come if we can just work out the details. And get pesky members of Congress and the public, who really don’t know how hard the banksters are working, to STFU.
And now, just a few months later, while the U.S. economy as we knew it continues to fall apart because these people aren’t using the money the way they sincerely promised Hanky and Timmeh they would, the banksters are whining, whining, whining because all those billions finally, maybe, just a little, have a few, very small, mostly avoidable, especially if you fool around with the rules and the numbers, restrictions.
In the midst of their whining, they want to give all those kinda, sorta, faintly restricted billions back so they can go on about their merry way destroying the U.S. economy and everyone in it.
Even though they needed them so badly a few months ago.
And they are very, very, very unhappy, displeased, absolutely put out that the government that handed them lots and lots of billions of mostly unrestricted dollars now want to put a few little restrictions on obscenely out of control salaries. Oh and the government (us) wants a return on its investment. Thank you very much.
But, woe is the bankster in need, the big banks (not the little ones, who are mostly innocent) are feeling mightily burdened by the fact that, in their moment of need, they agreed to compensate the American public for the loan of BILLIONS that we gave them so they could find ways to stop doing irreparable harm to the U.S. economy. If you or I got all pissy about paying back our credit cards at usurious rates, they would raise fees and interest until they own us. If they don’t already. But (is it obvious yet?) they aren't like us little people.
Now, here’s the thing. I, and many others like me, have been mighty worried about this tattered, beaten up, Bushwhacked country of ours. We have had the poor taste to fret about those folks living in tent cities and about a few million humans and animals in desperate need of care. We have had the gall to fear that our jobs, retirements, and futures might have dried up in a whirlwind of financial wrongdoing that has, let me make this clear, absolutely nothing to do with most of us. We’ve had the nerve to think that we really ought to scrape some change out of our pockets to help those in need.
How very retro of us.
Now, violence is not the answer. But this is trying, very trying.
My suggestions. Join a credit union. Join the New Way Forward movement. Pay off your credit card bill. Write your congressperson. Write your president. Ask your Treasury Secretary if he plans to pay his taxes this year (every little bit helps).
And do whatever is necessary to run these fuckers out of the country they have worked so very hard to destroy. There is no place for them here. Send them to whatever tax haven will have them. Or just wash them out to sea so they can go live on the island of floating garbage that their excesses helped create.
They are no longer welcome in any country I live in.