Is this a great country

for investment bankers or what?

It is exactly like a big game of ‘heads, I win: tails, you lose’! Or another way to put it is: privatize gains, socialize losses! That way, the investment bankers can take big, big risks and if it pans out, GREAT for them! They make lots of money. And if it does not pan out, the US taxpayers can come to their rescue. No reason for them not to take extravagant risks, or dabble in crime…. Because there is no penalty – the feds will bail them out!

"Our first priority today is the stability of the capital markets, the stability of the system." ~ Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

Well, I personally wonder about the fact that if we bail them out time and time again, some day the problem may be so huge that the US taxpayers can no longer bail them out. What happens then?

Well, here is what William Greider has to say about the current situation:

The Federal Reserve's dereliction of duty is central to the financial failures. It betrayed the purpose for which the central bank was first created, in 1913, abandoning the sense of balance the Fed had long pursued and that Congress requires. Most politicians, not to mention the press, are too intimidated to question the Fed's daunting power, but their ignorance is about to compound the problem. Instead of demanding answers, the political system is about to expand the Fed's governing powers--despite its failure to protect us. Treasury Secretary Paulson proposed and Democratic leaders have agreed to make the insulated Fed the "supercop" that oversees not only commercial banks and banking conglomerates but also the largest investment houses or anyone else big enough to destabilize the system. This "reform" would definitely reassure club members who are already too cozy with the central bankers. Everyone else would be left deeper in the dark.

The political system, once again, is rewarding failure. The Fed is an unreliable watchdog, ideologically biased and compromised by its conflicting obligations. Is it supposed to discipline the big money players or keep them afloat? Putting the secretive central bank in charge, with its unlimited powers to prop up troubled firms, would further eviscerate democracy, not to mention economic justice.

Yes, he pretty well covers what is going on currently, and demolishes that idea that the “free hand of the market” will make everything okay…… except right now the market’s ‘free hand’ is getting a helping hand from the US taxpayers. He also points out how we are bailing out the big investment firms, but won’t do anything for our cities and urban areas in need of maintenance (more bridges and levees to fail!).

Our current policies, coming from the US Congress, does nothing about the immoral loans being handed out to the Americans who are foolish enough to take them on. These are loans that are impossible to repay. This all came about because for the last few decades, our government has allowed more and more de-regulation. And, as a result, we got criminals gone wild.

Yeah, that “trickle-down” Reaganomics really didn’t work out so well – except for the very rich. But instead of blaming this disaster on those policies which made the rich, richer – they will try to pin it on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other social programs.

And it is going to get much worse before it starts to get better. Some people are saying that we will be facing the Greater Depression.