– I’m not the only one who’s on about Corporations and their power over American politics. This is from over on The Automatic Earth Blog.
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I’ve said it before and I know I’ll have to say it a million more times, and you still won’t get it, because you just don’t want it to be true. But it’s time.
We’re having the wrong conversations.
We speak the language of the world of finance, a language that doesn’t contain any words or expressions to describe the final stages of the world of finance itself. And I’m not saying that world is about to end, just that it lacks the terms to tell of its own demise. Modeled after other holy writings.
And it’s not all that farfetched either. If we, the taxpayer, hadn’t bought off their debts, none or close to none of the major financial institutions in America would still be alive. That includes Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and all the rest too busy with paying bonuses to answer our phone calls. Still, despicable as all that may seem to you, they’re not really the masterminds or main culprits, are they, the bankers?
They operate in an environment allowed and legislated for them by the very same people that you all voted for, from the President to your local Congressman. Anger directed at bankers is anger misdirected and misunderstood. How about you? Bankers can only act within the law. And who makes the laws?
Obama could have come in on January 21, 2009 with a proposal to kill any and all bankers’ influence in American politics. He did not do that. He did a 180 and chose to invite Wall Street to run American finance policy.
That’s a choice, it’s not some sort of accident, as some prefer to believe. Thinking anything else equals selling Obama short as some sort of douche. And then the president has left all these people in place one year later.So here we are. And that’s no accident either.
Tall tales keep on emerging on Obama’s confidantes, and even if every single one were a lie, he couldn’t keep all of them at a safe distance from the presidency, neither the stories nor the people. Geithner, Summers, Rubin, Romer, Goolsbee and Volcker, by now they’re all entangled in the same web, as is the nation. And there’s no way out using the same kind of thinking, nor the same people. Some may be helpful in defining new laws, new measures, new ways to limit Wall Street influence in Washington. But those limits will necessarily be limited. That’s how Washington works. Got a newborn? Lemme break its shinbones, just in case.
If the US ever wishes to get out of its present predicament, it needs to force its representatives to do two things. Which they will never do, because having that as a platform will be so sure of a losing bet that no bookie will take your spread. Here goes, and no, I can’t believe either I’m posting this for free:
First thing that has to happen on Capitol Hill if we want to prevent the US as a country, a society, and an idea for that matter, to live on and G-d help us prosper, is this:
- Get business out of politics
Joe Blow you and me will never have any say, or regain it, as long as Goldman, Cargill and GE can buy theirs. That is really all that needs to be said. The Supreme Court decision to increase corporate influence just was the icing on the cake that makes one think, in the words of Bugs: “Each people gets what they desoive”. It’s a death blow to anyone not in the inner circle having even a faint and remote say in where we’re heading, though, and that’s not what the Constitution meant to convey. But then again , once you get away with re-interpreting both Darwin and the Bible, what does the Constitution have on you?Humbug! Politics! Let’s get to number 2, something strangely missing from all Obama, his elves and his reindeer have said so far.
- Come up with a plan B
It’s not just us having the wrong conversations either, it’s all over the planet, where people who have nice jobs, especially the government ones, refuse to take a pay cut and insist they have a right to what’s theirs even if that means others will lose their jobs. Smart. Not.
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