I Give Up!!!!

I was already set to write an angry rant about how both major parties in the U.S. have completely sold out working America and in doing so have completely destroyed both the economy and any remnants we had in this country of the middle class.  Then I saw the headline that the president was seeking to repair any damage in his relationship with Wall Street in order to win their money in the form of campaign donations.  It was then that I lost all hope.

It's not just that Obama is seeking campaign cash from Wall Street, that is nothing new (his biggest single campaign contributor in the 2008 election was Goldman, Sachs).  What got to me most is that he was being so damn up front about it.  The fact that the Obama campaign isn't even trying to hide the fact that they are soliciting funds from the biggest financial criminals in the world means that they have determined that nobody cares.  Yes, they have decided that nobody cares about the fact that Wall Street banks, together with their friends in power in both parties (many of whom are in Obama's administration), set out on a series of horrific decisions which were designed to line the pockets of CEO's and other bankers and which ended up imploding the economy, eliminating millions of American jobs and bankrupting our society both morally and literally.

When the economy crashed back in 2008 ushering in what has become known as the "Great Recession" (and what will probably be referred to by historians as the Great Depression, Part Deux") many people were pointing fingers at the political party they disliked the most.  Democrats were pointing at Ronald Reagan's policies of deregulation, Republicans were pointing at Bill Clinton's policy of expanding home ownership to groups which had traditionally been shut out of home lending.  It was a field day of finger pointing.  So, who was responsible for the implosion -- Democrats or Republicans?  The answer is unequivocally both. 

What has happened over the last several decades, as money became more and more necessary to obtain and then retain power through election to Congress or any other political position worth seeking, is that both parties have become both dependent on and enamoured with Wall Street.  In doing so, both parties have tried to outdo each other in crafting legislation which would make it easier for Wall Street bankers to make as much money as they could possibly make, without requiring them to play by any rules whatsoever and to screw as many people as they can while doing so.  And, by the way, when it all implodes, we'll save you and require nothing in return for the trillions of taxpayer money that you will receive.  In so doing, what has been lost is any voice the middle class had in Washington or anywhere else.

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, I was an enthusiastic and passionate supporter.  I really felt that finally we had someone who was going to change the game.  I felt that we had someone who was going to set our nation's moral compass on the right path, bring those who were responsible for defrauding our nation's treasury to justice and set us on a course where the world would once again look to our nation with awe and respect.

What I didn't know back then was exactly what had happened to lead to the economic mess in which we found ourselves in 2008 and in which we still find ourselves today.  If I had known then what I know now, I would have realized that the jig was up early on.  I would have realized that I had been hoodwinked, bamboozled, lead astray as soon as he announced that Timothy Geithner was going to be named Treasury Secretary and Lawrence Summers was Obama's choice as chief financial advisor.  What I know now is that Timothy Geithner was the leading force behind what would become known as TARP.  What I know now is that it was Geithner, not Hank Paulson, GWB's Treasury Secretary, who pulled the strings on the series of idiotic and unbelievable decisions made in 2007 and 2008 from the bailout of Bear Stearns to the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the scuttled attempt to bail out Lehman Brothers which resulted in Lehman's collapse to the ultimate bailout of the entire investment banking industry, which allowed the investment banks to carry on their nefarious dealing at the expense of the economy with no ramifications at all. 

Both Geithner and Summers were proteges of Robert Rubin, who during Bill Clinton's presidency was the architect of the dismantling of the entire safety net of regulations and laws which had kept our economy on a more or less even keel since World War II.  If bankers like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein are economic terrorists, Rubin was their spiritual advisor.

It was Rubin, who during his time as Treasury Secretary to Bill Clinton, who championed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the passing of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, both of which were sponsored by arch-conservative Phil ("Stop Whining") Gramm and enthusiastically signed into law by Clinton.  You see, in Washington the only time you can truly get bi-partisanship is when you are giving the wealthiest people in the nation the ability to destroy the entire basis of the economy for their own profit.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a magnificent little bit of economic terrorism foisted upon the nation by the folks at what would become known as Citigroup and their buddy, the aforementioned Secretary Rubin.  Glass-Steagall was a very simple law passed during the Depression which essentially sought to contain risk and protect consumers by simply saying that different types of financial institutions had to be completely seperate from each other.  Investment banks had to be investment banks, commercial banks had to be commercial banks, insurance companies had to be insurance companies and never the twain shall meet.  This had a two-fold effect on the economy by 1) protecting consumers by making sure that their commercial bank or life insurance company did not take their deposits and bet them in the risky investments that investment banks were known for; and 2) if there was an implosion of a certain sector of the economic marketplace -- let's say derivatives based on risky mortgages that were given to homeless people to buy McMansions -- that the losses suffered in that sector would not be spread throughout the economy since the sectors were completely separate from each other.

In the late 1990s, in complete disregard of this 70 year-old law, Citibank announced that it was merging with the insurance giant Traveler's Group to form the behemoth financial terrorist syndicate known as Citigroup.  This, of course, should never have happened since it was in flagrant violation of the law.  However, there is no doubt that Citigroup knew that they had the implicit support of the leadership of both parties, not to mention the President and that this would be allowed to happen.  The tactic that Citigroup used to force Congress to submit to their demands was that Citigroup took the economy hostage and demanded the repeal of Glass-Steagall as its ransom.  Citigroup said that if the merger was not allowed to happen, that both Citibank and Travelers would fail and the ramifications to the economy as a whole would be devastating (this has since been used again and again to overlook the bad actions of banks, hedge funds and other industries deemed too big to fail and bail them out at taxpayer expense).  Even without the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the merger was allowed to go through on a limited basis, something that was necessary for Rubin to get all of his ducks in a row in order to have Congress pass and the President sign the ultimate repeal of Glass-Steagall near the end of Clinton's presidency.  Rubin, by that time, had left his position as Treasury Secretary and been replaced by Lawrence Summers.  Rubin, did all right for himself, since after leaving his position as Treasury Secretary, he went on to be an executive with the newly formed and newly legal (thanks to him) Citigroup and rake in tens of millions of dollars in compensation.

The other legislative gem to come out of the Clinton-Rubin-Summers-Geithner regime was the Commodities Futures Modernization Act.  Another brain child of Phil Gramm and his wife former Commodities Futures Trade  Commission commissioner (and Enron board member) Wendy Gramm, made it so that the exotic financial instruments known as derivatives, which would play such a large role in the crisis of 2008, would be traded free from government interference or regulation.  The act defined derivatives as being neither futures or securities and thus free from regulation by the CFTC or the SEC.  This act left it up to Wall Street to police itself on these inherently complex and unintelligible trading products which had been described as "financial weapons of mass destruction" by none other than Warren Buffet.

The essence of all of this is that the entire financial and political philosophy of these Dems in sheep's clothing is that government should do absolutely everything it can to make life as easy as possible for those with the most money in our society to continue their scorched earth investment policies leaving the economy bare while they suck every last dime from the economy to pay for their vacation homes and Lamborghinis.  What it also did was destroy the last remnants of the Democratic Party as the champion of the working class -- a mantle the party had held since the days of FDR.

So, back to Barack Obama.  Slick Barry talked a pretty good game back in 2008 and even continued since then, talking about sticking it to the "fat cats" or wondering whose "ass he should kick".  But in reality, it was just the sales pitch of another carnival barker looking to rope in his marks.  The real Barack Obama has continued the economic policies started under Ronald Reagan, continued under George H.W. Bush, put into overdrive by Bill Clinton, and sent over the edge of the cliff by George W. Bush.  The reforms and regulations promised in the campaign have been toothless tigers passed more for show than for implementing real change.  Now, Obama is seeking payment for his deeds in semi-secret White House meetings with Wall Street CEO's reminiscent of the energy meetings Dick Cheney fought to keep secret.

So, I give up.  There is no chance that things are going to change for the better.  The middle class has become the peasant class.  There is no end in sight to the economic disaster that our country is in.  There will be no candidates in the 2012 election who provide any kind of true alternative to the Plutocrats who have taken control of our nation.  Obama will probably succeed in getting Wall Street money to once again flow into his campaign war chest, as they will see in him a kindred spirit -- one who is as soulless and hypocritical as they are.  We are lost.