OBAMA THE SWINE HERDER & HIS PIGS

*

*

The counterfeit nature of our economy

is troubling enough, given that financial

power is concentrated in the hands of a few

key players - "300 white guys in Manhattan,"

as a former high-placed executive puts it.

But over the course of the past year,

that group of insiders has also proved itself

brilliantly capable of enlisting the power of

the state to help along the process of concentrating

economic might - making it less and less likely

that the financial markets will ever be policed,

since the state is increasingly the captive

of these interests.

*

The new president for whom we all had such

high hopes went and hired Michael Froman,

a Citigroup executive who accepted a $2.2

million bonus after he joined the White House,

to serve on his economic transition team -

at the same time the government was giving

Citigroup a massive bailout.

Then, after promising to curb the influence

of lobbyists, Obama hired a former Goldman

Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as chief of staff

at the Treasury. He hired another Goldmanite,

Gary Gensler, to police the commodities markets.

He handed control of the Treasury and Federal

Reserve over to Geithner and Bernanke,

a pair of stooges who spent their whole careers

being bellhops for New York bankers.

And on the first anniversary of the collapse

of Lehman Brothers, when he finally came to

Wall Street to promote "serious financial

reform," his plan proved to be so completely

absent of balls that the share prices of

the major banks soared at the news.

*

The nation's largest financial players are

able to write the rules for their own businesses

and brazenly steal billions under the noses

of regulators, and nothing is done about it.

A thing so fundamental to civilized society

as the integrity of a stock, or a mortgage note,

or even a U.S. Treasury bond, can no longer

be protected, not even in a crisis, and a crime

as vulgar and conspicuous as counterfeiting

can take place on a systematic level for years

without being stopped, even after it begins

to affect the modern-day equivalents of the

Rockefellers and the Carnegies.

What 10 years ago was a cheap stockfraud

scheme for second-rate grifters in Brooklyn

has become a major profit center for Wall Street.

Our burglar class now rules the national economy.

And no one is trying to stop them.

*

From a much longer article by

Matt Taibbi -

"WALL STREET'S NAKED SWINDLE"

Rolling Stone RS1089 (on the stands now)

*