SELLING OUT THE PEOPLE WORKS
Glenn Greenwald’s piece this morning takes off on two fronts to show how President Obama has pleased the National Security State people by authorizing record power to spy on the American people, even without cause, while pleasing the ruling Forces of Greed by doing everything he could to help the banksters while leaving the victims of the banksters in free fall to lose their homes and jobs.
Obama got record campaign financing from banksters in his first shot at the White House, and appears to be attempting to top that.
Every time we hear corporate media talk about how great the economy is, we understand it is only for the wealthy, many of them scumbags who would be in prison if we had a system of justice based on justice. Abby Zimet has a graph this morning [below] showing “The incredible shrinking workers’ share of income,” in what the unscrupulous corporate media tell us is the “land of opportunity.”
Corporate Crime Reporter has a piece this morning saying we may expect another bankster bailout, this time costing us $5 trillion as laissez faire capitalism wrenches the last crust of bread from the hands of starving children.
That we don’t have riots in the streets is owed entirely to our deceptive corporate media, which has the majority of the population stumbling about like zombies.
The Crime Reporter piece notes that the largest banks are now 20 percent larger today than they were the Big Bust. In an extended interview with Neil Barofsky, who was Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the following also came out:
Barofsky believes TARP would have been better off with someone like Elizabeth Warren on the inside – instead on the outside looking in.
“It is striking how overwhelmingly the key decision makers in the TARP program came from Wall Street.”
“When you look back on it, it shouldn’t be that surprising that TARP, a program that was designed to help both Wall Street and Main Street, has done a phenomenal job in helping Wall Street and a terrible job in fulfilling its Main Street goals.”
“This is not because the people who came from Wall Street were corrupt. It’s not because they were out to screw the little guy. It’s because of the lack of diversity. They did what they knew best and what they thought was best.”
“But you had this uniform group of people from Wall Street – Hank Paulson from Goldman Sachs, the people who were running TARP who came from Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, the investment officers came from a series of Wall Street banks, right down to the housing person who came from Bank of America.”
“So, it’s not that surprising that your policies reflect Wall Street’s priorities.”
“Think about how much different this program would have been had Elizabeth Warren – instead of being appointed to provide oversight of TARP – was instead put inside the bubble and was part of the decision making process in designing TARP’s response.”
“You’d see a much different and a much better program.”
And Barofsky is critical of the Obama administration for not appointing Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“If the President made the decision that Elizabeth Warren was the right person to stand up this agency, which he essentially did in appointing her as an advisor, then he should have nominated her for the position,” Barofsky said. “This was her idea. I got to know and work with Elizabeth when she was chair of the Congressional oversight panel, which also provided TARP oversight. She is doing a terrific job in her more limited role right now. And she would be a terrific nominee and a terrific director for that agency. By not getting 100 percent behind her early on, they put themselves in a very difficult position. Now, it’s going to be difficult to even have a recess appointment – whether it is Professor Warren or whether it is somebody else.”
