At the recent Buttonwood conference held at New York's Pace University and hosted by the Economist magazine, Elizabeth Warren (the TARP overseer) told Yahoo Tech Ticker that:
This is a moment when all around the country people are saying we've had it about up to here with these large financial institutions that want to write the rule then take our money. I find it astonishing that they have the nerve to show up and say, 'I'm a big financial institution. I took your money. And now I'm going to lobby against anything that might offer some protection to ordinary families in this marketplace'
To contextualize, both the American consumer and government are grossly over-leveraged. The gross public debt is estimated to exceed 100% of US GDP ($13 Trillion) next year. Estimates place all government liabilities, from Treasury bonds to Medicare to military pensions, at a value of $63.8 Trillion (490% of GDP). In the meantime, the dollar continues its decline against other currencies, unemployment is rising, foreclosures increased by 5% in Q3 2009, manufacturing industries are running significantly under capacity and at historical lows, and yet the big banks are making record profits and handing out equally obscene bonuses.
The real question is why there aren't angry pitchforked masses storming 'The Bastille' so to speak today?
The hyper-partisan tea-baggers are certainly not a real source of protestation, for their objective is get more "real Americans" or Sarah Palin-esque clones who are dismally educated congenital corporatists that also happen to be WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon persons) back into the White House.
History on the other hand is replete with examples, the French Revolution but one, where the public realizing the criminal excesses of their political and aristocratic masters demand through civil uprising to remove the sclerotic and incompetent regime du jour. Unless the oligarchs of casino-capitalism and the congressional stooges who have been bought and sold like disposable sex-workers are removed (i.e. off with their heads!), America will continue to decline. The Obama administration has proven itself incompetent or at least unwilling to truly challenge big business and deliver the "change" that they endlessly advertised during his presidential campaign. It remains to be determined whether those who voted for change will have the courage to inflict a lasting and necessary punishment on the Democrats and Republicans, in order to rid the nation of these maleficent corporate parasites.
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