It is not too soon — or too late — to become angry. Evidence continues to pour in that our government needs to be shaken like a dirty rug. Are we weaker than the people of Iran? How much evidence do we need to spark outrage?
To jump-start this process, please read this article: “The Great American Bubble Machine“, Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, 9-23 July 2009 — Hat tip to Zero Hedge.
(1) Opening
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression – and they’re about to do it again.
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.
By now most of us know the major players. … But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and a free elections, organized greed always defeats unorganized democracy.
(2) Conclusion
It’s not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there’s a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can’t really register the fact that you’re no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you’re no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight …
But this is it. This is the world we live in now. … It’s a gangster state, running on gangster economics … And maybe we can’t stop it, but we should at least know where it’s all going.
(3) Further vollies between Goldman and Taibbi (update)
- “Goldman Sachs responds to Taibbi“, Felix Salmon, blog of Reuters, 26 June 2009 — Really weak response from Goldman.
- “On giving Goldman a chance“, Matt Taibbi, True/Slant, 30 June 2009
Best part of this exchange:
Goldman’s rep: “we are painfully conscious of the importance of being a force for good.”
Taibbi: “{That} is not quite the same thing as saying that that bank is a force for good, or wants to be.”
(4) More evidence about this crisis in the American political regime
I strongly recommend reading all these, so you can tell your children that you were awake when America died. Or perhaps re-discovered itself. Depends on what we do now.
(1) The Big Takeover“, Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, 19 March 2009 — “The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution.”
(2) “Welcome to America, the World’s Scariest Emerging Market“, Desmond Lachman, op-ed in the Washington Post, 29 March 2009.
(3) “Teabagging Michelle Malkin“, Matt Taibbi, True/Slant, 15 April 2009
(4) “The Quiet Coup“, Simon Johnson (MIT professor, former IMF chief economist), The Atlantic, May 2009 — Similar thoughts, but more mildly expressed.
(5) “‘It’s time to enshrine Hank Paulson as national hero’ WTF?“, Matt Taibbi, True/Slant, 8 June 2009
(5) Articles on the FM site about theft pretending to be solutions
- Slowly a few voices are raised about the pending theft of taxpayer money, 21 September 2008
- The Paulson Plan will buy assets cheap, just as all good cons offer easy money to the marks, 30 September 2008
- A reminder – the TARP program is just theft, 24 November 2008
- A solution to our financial problems: steal wealth from other nations, 2 February 2009
- Stand by for action – more theft of our money being planned in Washington, 4 February 2009
- Update: yes, the Paulson Plan was just theft, 14 February 2009
- Now is the time for America to get angry, 24 March 2009
- America on its way from superpower to banana republic, 28 March 2009
- Bush’s bailout plan is now Obama’s. His quiet eloquence guides the sheep into the pen, 30 March 2009
- “The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold”, by Andy Kroll in The Nation, 28 May 2009
(6) A closing thought
The first step is not knowledge. Not logic. But rage, contempt at what we have become. From that other things can flow, good or bad depending on our character.
“Anger is easy. Anger at the right person, at the right time, for the right reason, is difficult.”
— Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, book IV, chapter 5 (lightly paraphrased)
“Telemachus, now is the time to be angry.”
— Odysseus, when the time came to deal with the Suitors. From the movie The Odessey (1997)
For us the time is now. The reason is the preservation of our nation. The target is ourselves, how we have become less than we were. Less than we should be. Less than we can be.
This is the opposite of most proposals offered today, which suggest blaming some combination of the world, the rich, the poor, terrorists, foreigners, or whatever. Or our leaders, who don’t kiss our boo-boos and cut the cake unfairly. Everybody is responsible, except us. Folks proposing such views suggest that we adopt the attitude of alarmed cattle. Or mice.
(7) Afterword
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