Robert Scheer on Libor: Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen - on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend

how massive does the fraud have to be, how many trillions of dollars does it have to involve, how many millions of people have to be ripped off, and how many more of these mega-crimes have to surface before these global criminals are stopped, and by stopped, i mean arrested, indicted, convicted and put away...?

robert scheer in truthdig...

The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.

Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financiers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.

here's more from al jazeera...



and here's a longer treatment of the scandal from al jazeera's inside story with economist bill black making a guest appearance...




and, finally, this from current tv's viewpoint...

"Viewpoint" host Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone contributing editor, and Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, analyze the Libor interest rate--rigging scandal engulfing the banking industry.

Barclays CEO Bob Diamond recently resigned after the bank was fined $453 million for its part in the scandal, which involved manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), a key global benchmark for interest rates, by essentially "faking their credit scores," according to Taibbi. And as Taibbi explains, Barclays couldn't have acted alone.

"It can't just be Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland. In fact, it can't even be four banks or even five banks," he says. "Really, in the end it's probably going to come out that it's going to be all of them ... involved in this. And that's what's critical for people to understand: that this is a cartel-style corruption."

Kelleher argues that the Libor scandal is proof that the financial industry "is corrupt and rotten to its core." "The same executives [using] the same business model that crashed the entire financial system in '08 are still running these banks," he says.

 

why does accountability and the rule of law only apply to the peasants...?

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Chris Hedges: The fight in Quebec is our fight. Their enemy is our enemy. And their victory is our victory.

i'm encouraged by what's happening in quebec... they are clearly protesting for the same reasons that gave rise to the arab spring, the occupy movement, the student protests in chile and the indignados in spain: the brutal hand of the global corporate state...

chris hedges in truthdig...

The Quebec government, which like the United States’ security and surveillance state is deaf to the pleas for justice and fearful of widespread unrest, has reacted by trying to stamp out the rebellion. It has arrested hundreds of protesters. The government passed Law 78, which makes demonstrations inside or near a college or university campus illegal and outlaws spontaneous demonstrations in the province. It forces those who protest to seek permission from the police and imposes fines of up to $125,000 for organizations that defy the new regulations. This, as with the international Occupy movement, has become a test of wills between a disaffected citizenry and the corporate state. The fight in Quebec is our fight. Their enemy is our enemy. And their victory is our victory
.
This sustained resistance is far more effective than a May Day strike. If Canadians can continue to boycott university classrooms, continue to get crowds into the streets and continue to keep the mainstream behind the movement, the government will become weak and isolated. It is worth attempting in the United States.


[...]


The importance of the Occupy movement, and the reason I suspect its encampments were so brutally dismantled by the Obama administration, is that the corporate state understood and feared its potential to spark a popular rebellion. I do not think the state has won. All the injustices and grievances that drove people into the Occupy encampments and onto the streets have been ignored by the state and are getting worse. And we will see eruptions of discontent in the weeks and months ahead.


If these mass protests fail, opposition will inevitably take a frightening turn. The longer we endure political paralysis, the longer the formal mechanisms of power fail to respond, the more the extremists on the left and the right—those who venerate violence and are intolerant of ideological deviations—will be empowered. Under the steady breakdown of globalization, the political environment has become a mound of tinder waiting for a light.

hedges goes on to express his concern that the longer the fundamental issues go unaddressed and the more that protests are suppressed, the greater the likelihood of violence...

The left in times of turmoil always coughs up its own version of the goons on the far right. Black Bloc anarchists within the Occupy movement in the United States, although they remain marginal, replicate the hyper-masculinity, lust for violence and quest for ideological purity of the right while using the language of the left. And they, or a similar configuration, will grow if the center disintegrates.

and that is something i most fervently pray does not happen...

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Mr. Fish: The altruism and profound compassion of the 1%

from truthdig...

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WHO: one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression

chris hedges in truthdig...

When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of “primitive” societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.

[...]

Rebuilding this older vision of community, one based on cooperation rather than exploitation, will be as important to our survival as changing our patterns of consumption, growing food locally and ending our dependence on fossil fuels.

[...]

The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the “beast.” 

The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction.

what i've never been able to adequately grasp is why more of us haven't been able to see through such an empty, shallow view of life, one so completely devoid of any spiritual dimension...

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40,000 Norwegians sing about love for others, regardless of creed, gender or skin color

this is truly inspiring... seeing people come together and re-affirm that we are all in this boat together is well worth celebrating...

For proving that love for others, regardless of creed, gender or skin color, is still a powerful force in human affairs, we honor the 40,000 Norwegians who sang out in an Oslo square on Thursday against the violent dogma of mass killer Anders Breivik. They are our Truthdiggers of the Week.

[...]

Taken as a solemn pledge, the public chorus of “Children of the Rainbow,” a song based on a 1973 hymn by American folk artist Pete Seeger and led on Thursday by Norwegian folksinger Lillebjorn Nilsen, seems more like an act of affirmation than dissent. Shaken by the horrific violence, these people braved a cold rain to tell the world they want to live in a society where all people have the opportunity to find their place. And such an experience emboldens those who may previously have felt alone in the suffering they felt after Breivik’s massacre.

 

One blue sky above us
One ocean lapping all our shore
One earth so green and round
Who could ask for more
And because I love you
I’ll give it one more try
To show my rainbow race
It’s too soon to die.

Some folks want to be like an ostrich,
Bury their heads in the sand.
Some hope that plastic dreams
Can unclench all those greedy hands.
Some hope to take the easy way:
Poisons, bombs. They think we need ‘em.
Don’t you know you can’t kill all the unbelievers?
There’s no shortcut to freedom.

Go tell, go tell all the little children.
Tell all the mothers and fathers too.
Now’s our last chance to learn to share
What’s been given to me and you.

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Robert Scheer: Our elections are a hoax

so very, very sad...

robert scheer writing in truthdig...

Our own elections, the ones our government has modeled for the world, are a hoax. What other word should we use to describe this year’s presidential election, whose outcome will turn on which party’s super PACs gets the most generous bribes from billionaires? The Republicans, enabled by decisions of a Supreme Court they still control, were the first out of the gate and are far more culpable in destroying our system of popular governance. But the Democrats, no less committed to winning at any cost to political principle, have now jumped in.

The generally reserved New York Times editorial page responded to the Obama campaign’s decision to seek super PAC funding with a scathing editorial headlined “Another Campaign for Sale.” The Times reminded that Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech two years ago, called out the Supreme Court justices sitting before him over their decision to free special interests from campaign spending limits. “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests,” Obama said then. “They should be decided by the American people.” But sadly, as the Times editorial noted this week, “On Monday, the President abandoned that fundamental principle and gave in to the culture of the Citizens United decision that he once denounced as a ‘threat to our democracy.’ ”

[...]

Once again he has failed to take that case for economic justice to the American people and instead validated the Republican assault on what remains of our democracy.

and, with breakneck speed, we are headed to yet another presidential election where the choices are not really choices at all... i'm both angry and embarrassed that i actually thought 2008 presented a choice... silly me...

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A direct threat to the freedom of the American people every bit as menacing as any we face from foreign enemies

and a happy holiday to all...

robert scheer...

The defense authorization bill that Congress passed and President Obama had threatened to veto will soon become law, a fact that should be met with public outrage. Human Rights Watch President Kenneth Roth, responding to Obama’s craven collapse on the bill’s most controversial provision, said, “By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.” On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed “the most recent changes give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country’s strength.”

What rubbish, coming from a president who taught constitutional law. The point is not to hock our civil liberty to the discretion of the president, but rather to guarantee our freedoms even if a Dick Cheney or Newt Gingrich should attain the highest office.

Sadly this flagrant subversion of the constitutionally guaranteed right to due process of law was opposed in the Senate by only seven senators, including libertarian Republican Rand Paul and progressive Independent Bernie Sanders.

That onerous provision of the defense budget bill, much discussed on the Internet but far less so in the mass media, assumes a permanent war against terrorism that extends the battlefield to our homeland. It reeks of a militarized state that threatens the foundations of our republican form of government.

[...]

What’s alarming is ... the ease with which an otherwise deadlocked Congress that can’t manage minimal funding for job creation and unemployment relief can find the money to fund at Cold War levels a massive sophisticated arsenal to defeat an enemy that no longer exists.

Throwing $662 billion, plus hundreds of billions more in non-Pentagon “security” programs, at what that other great-general-turned-president, Dwight Eisenhower, condemned as the “military-industrial complex,” with its tentacles in every congressional district, is an act of absurdity in a world bereft of a serious military challenge to the United States. Not even the best-funded terrorists can afford aircraft carriers.

[...]

We had every right to expect President Obama to stick to his word and veto this bill, not as a means of forcing a much needed bigger cut in government waste, but more urgently because its assault on the Constitution’s requirement of due process represents a direct threat to the freedom of the American people every bit as menacing as any we face from foreign enemies.

feeling that holiday spirit yet...?

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Time to stop addressing our concerns to the hired help; from now on, we deal directly with the masters

the post title comes from an article in truthdig by lawrence weschler...

Time to Start Preoccupying Wall Street

i'm a little uncomfortable with the notion of "dealing directly with the masters" if only because i don't acknowledge them as my "masters"... i know that, for all practical purposes, they ARE my masters but i'm not interested in petitioning them for a goddam thing... i think they simply need to go away and in so doing release their monopolistic stranglehold on money and power... get the hell out of the way so that ordinary folks can step into the power of self-determination - the way it was meant to be and the way we were born to be...

in the article, weschler offers, as so many are doing following the shut-down of so many occupy encampments, his prescription for next steps for occupy, in short, "a major national mortgage and student loan strike"... whatever the merits of such an idea, the purest grain of truth in the article is in this paragraph...

In doing so, the movement ought to build on another of Occupy Wall Street’s greatest conceptual breakthroughs: the insight that it’s become pointless to address our concerns to the politicians—a political system virtually paralyzed, evenly divided between bullies and weenies, with a president for all intents and purposes veritably palsied with compunction and misgiving (who knows why and who cares anymore?). You don’t occupy Capitol Hill; you occupy Wall Street. And the formula needs to continue to be: time to stop addressing our concerns to the hired help; from now on, we deal directly with the masters.

again, as i've said before, we're dealing with a massively systemic problem here and attempting to address it through the existing system is ludicrous... we're way past the point of incremental fixes...

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Don't join the Army (or the Air Force, the Marines or the Navy) expecting to find honor

from mr. fish at truthdig...



full disclosure - i'm a vietnam veteran...

i was invited to a veterans day assembly at my grandson's school on thursday... i went for him only, not out of any particular pride i have in being a veteran...

while it's a fact that my gi bill enabled me to earn both my undergraduate and graduate degrees (for which i'm grateful and without which i would not have been able to repeatedly land on my feet over the years), that i learned a great deal from my experience, that i never had to fire my rifle the entire time, that i came back in one piece, and that my health care provider for the past ten years has been the va (since i can't afford private insurance), being a vietnam vet isn't something i advertise... while i'm not ashamed of it, i am acutely aware of just how much my country is steeped in militarism and that is something i just can't support...

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By definition, global corporations are un-American

david intrator, a harvard grad and businessman, on occupy wall street...

from truthdig...



here's a comment from the youtube site...

Yes, I am "fundamentally conservative by nature". I want fairness, justice, and a chance for normal people to raise their families, work in a safe and sane environment, and live their lives in peace and reasonable comfort. (I know, sometimes that makes me a radical.) I am overjoyed to see this man spell out this message the way that he has. This is wonderful, and yes, more people need to see it. I am going to share it extensively.

what mr. intrator spells out should scare the ever-loving shit out of our super-rich elites because it exposes the very hypocrisies and lies that have been painstakingly built to lead us to the current worldwide rape and pillage by the corporatocracy...

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Political pornography

bill moyers...

There’s an interesting study out from the University of Michigan about how people don’t want to listen to the facts. Even if they know a fact is authentic, if they know it’s true, but if it offends their—or insults or undermines their belief system, they don’t want to, they don’t accept it; they reject it. That’s one reason, the explanation for the solid support the right-wing and conservative media have. Unless there’s an alternative to Fox News, to Rush Limbaugh—unless there are guys like you [Robert Scheer], Thom Hartmann and Amy Goodman out there, continuing to press the evidence to the contrary, continuing to do forensic journalism, deeply researched journalism—really we’re going to live in that smog of propaganda, sentimentality and frankly, pornography, which has—political pornography has transformed our discourse into an ugly and grotesque version of what should be a good conversation of democracy.

there's a lot of folks that i run across who fall in to the "don't want to listen to the facts" category... i have to say, however, that there's always somebody who surprises me...

this 28 year-old aussie private security company guy who has been helping out at the place i live in kabul is one of those... he only has a high school degree (level of education, as i learned long ago, is FAR from an indicator of intelligence) but his level of intellectual curiosity is remarkable... he knows more about what's going on in the world than a lot of much older, much more highly educated people and, what's more, he has a knack for putting the pieces together, an even rarer ability... it always gives me hope to unexpectedly find somebody like that...

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Hedges: Transforming a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs

which has been the plan all along...

chris hedges...

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

sigh... i hate posting on the truth but better that than sticking my head in the sand...

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The U.S. military is used to conquer countries for the rich, to seize markets, land, resources and labor for Wall Street

the title is part of a quote from iraq war veteran michael prysner, a co-founder of march forward, a veterans group against war and rasicm... the quote is part of chris hedges latest post in truthdig...

Even Lost Wars Make Corporations Rich

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We have a power that terrifies the corporate state

chris hedges...

We may feel, in the face of the ruthless corporate destruction of our nation, our culture, and our ecosystem, powerless and weak. But we are not. We have a power that terrifies the corporate state. Any act of rebellion, no matter how few people show up or how heavily it is censored by a media that caters to the needs and profits of corporations, chips away at corporate power. Any act of rebellion keeps alive the embers for larger movements that follow us. It passes on another narrative. It will, as the rot of the state consumes itself, attract wider and wider numbers. Perhaps this will not happen in our lifetimes. But if we persist, we will keep this possibility alive. If we do not, it will die.

All energy directed toward reforming political and state structures is useless. All efforts to push through a “progressive” agenda within the corridors of power are naïve. Trust in the reformation of our corporate state reflects a failure to recognize that those who govern, including Barack Obama, are as deaf to public demands and suffering as those in the old Communist regimes. We cannot rely on any systems of power, including the pillars of the liberal establishment—the press, liberal religious institutions, universities, labor, culture and the Democratic Party. They have been weakened to the point of anemia or work directly for the corporations that dominate our existence. We can rely now on only ourselves, on each other.

[...]

As long as a few of us rebel, it will always remain possible to defeat a system of centralized, corporate power that is as criminal and heartless as those I watched tumble into the ash bin of history in Eastern Europe.

i can't help but feel as though we're approaching a major tipping point...

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All social and cultural values are now sacrificed before the altar of the marketplace

chris hedges...

Commerce cannot be the sole guide of human behavior. This utopian fantasy, embraced by the tea party as well as the liberal elite, defies 3,000 years of economic history. It is a chimera. This ideology has been used to justify the disempowerment of the working class, destroy our manufacturing capacity, and ruthlessly gut social programs that once protected and educated the working and middle class. It has obliterated the traditional liberal notion that societies should be configured around the common good. All social and cultural values are now sacrificed before the altar of the marketplace.

[...]

Our social and political ethic can be summed up in the mantra let the market decide. Greed is good.

in the documentary, the corporation, a film i use in my mba class, often to the displeasure of my students, has a segment in it where a so-called "authority" not only predicts but actively espouses the privatization of EVERYTHING, every square inch of earth, air and water, out of the belief that "ownership" equates to "stewardship," a belief that has been repeatedly shown to be profoundly misplaced...

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Saturday's empty "Rally to Restore Sanity"

chris hedges...

The celebrities from Comedy Central and the trash talk show hosts on Fox are in the same business. They are entertainers. They provide the empty, emotionally laden material that propels endless chatter back and forth on supposed left- and right-wing television programs. It is a national Punch and Judy show. But don’t be fooled. It is not politics. It is entertainment. It is spectacle. All national debate on the airwaves is driven by the same empty gossip, the same absurd trivia, the same celebrity meltdowns and the same ridiculous posturing. It is presented with a different spin. But none of it is about ideas or truth. None of it is about being informed. It caters to emotions. It makes us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge. And in the end, for those who serve up this drivel, the game is about money in the form of ratings and advertising. Beck, Colbert and Stewart all serve the same masters. And it is not us.

sitting here in buenos aires, i tuned in to the rally briefly on the c-span internet live stream and experienced an immediate, negative and very visceral reaction... the only way i can describe it is that seeing colbert and stewart on the platform at the national mall was shockingly, jarringly out of context... somehow, they just didn't belong there... it was like they had decided to combine their respective television shows and take them on location, only they weren't doing their shows, they were doing this totally contrived shtick that was neither funny nor engaging... just by watching, i somehow felt manipulated... about three minutes was all i could stand so i closed the window...

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There are no longer any major institutions ... which can be considered democratic

hard words from chris hedges... hard to hear and hard to accept but shot through and through with unmistakable truth...

There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic. The intent, design and function of these institutions, controlled by corporate money, are to bolster the hierarchical and anti-democratic power of the corporate state. These institutions, often mouthing liberal values, abet and perpetuate mounting inequality. They operate increasingly in secrecy. They ignore suffering or sacrifice human lives for profit. They control and manipulate all levers of power and mass communication. They have muzzled the voices and concerns of citizens. They use entertainment, celebrity gossip and emotionally laden public-relations lies to seduce us into believing in a Disneyworld fantasy of democracy.

The menace we face does not come from the insane wing of the Republican Party, which may make huge inroads in the coming elections, but the institutions tasked with protecting democratic participation. Do not fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Do not fear the tea party movement, the birthers, the legions of conspiracy theorists or the militias. Fear the underlying corporate power structure, which no one, from Barack Obama to the right-wing nut cases who pollute the airwaves, can alter. If the hegemony of the corporate state is not soon broken we will descend into a technologically enhanced age of barbarism.

Investing emotional and intellectual energy in electoral politics is a waste of time. Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform. The democratic system, and the liberal institutions that once made piecemeal reform possible, is dead. It exists only in name. It is no longer a viable mechanism for change. And the longer we play our scripted and absurd role in this charade the worse it will get. Do not pity Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. They will get what they deserve. They sold the citizens out for cash and power. They lied. They manipulated and deceived the public, from the bailouts to the abandonment of universal health care, to serve corporate interests. They refused to halt the wanton corporate destruction of the ecosystem on which all life depends. They betrayed the most basic ideals of democracy. And they, as much as the Republicans, are the problem.

and, as always, the question is, "so, what do we do...?" i've always taught, preached and, insofar as i've been able, practiced empowerment because i believe mankind has been duped for thousands of years into abdicating the power we've all been granted as a birthright, abdicated it to those who either take it from us by force or, as has been the case in the united states, those who claim they are acting in our "best interests" have convinced us to willingly cede it them... HA...!

hedges, in what i consider to be a B.G.O. (blinding glimpse of the obvious), offers a solution, one that has been in front of my nose all of my life, but didn't firmly click into place until just now...

“It is like being in a pit,” Ralph Nader told me when we spoke on Saturday. “If you are four feet in the pit you have a chance to grab the top and hoist yourself up. If you are 30 feet in the pit you have to start on a different scale.”

All resistance will take place outside the arena of electoral politics. The more we expand community credit unions, community health clinics and food cooperatives and build alternative energy systems, the more empowered we will become.

“To the extent that these organizations expand and get into communities where they do not exist, we will weaken the multinational goliath, from the banks to the agribusinesses to the HMO giants and hospital chains,” Nader said.

hedges also makes the most articulate expression of what i have been thinking for quite some time...

Liberals, who betrayed the working class, have no credibility. This is one of the principle reasons the anti-war movement cannot attract the families whose sons and daughters are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. And liberal hypocrisy has opened the door for a virulent right wing. If we are to reconnect with the working class we will have to begin from zero. We will have to rebuild the ties with the poor and the working class which the liberal establishment severed. We will have to condemn the liberal class as vociferously as we condemn the right wing. And we will have to remain true to the moral imperative to foster the common good and the tangible needs of housing, health care, jobs, education and food.

i've been toying with the idea of closing two of my three bank accounts, one with wells fargo and the other with hsbc and consolidating them in my long-term credit union account... reading this has turned a notion into a decision... yes, it may be a small thing in the larger scheme of things but, hey...! it's still a step...

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License to steal

yes, i've been posting extensively on the rape and pillage of the economy and the rapidly-disappearing middle class being conducted by our super-rich elites... i'm not sure it's possible to give too much exposure to the outright coup that's been taking place for years but has escalated dramatically in the past few years...

robert scheer...

They do have a license to steal. There is no other way to read Tuesday’s report from the New York state comptroller that bonuses for Wall Street financiers rose 17 percent to $20.3 billion in 2009. Of course that is less than the $32.9 billion for bonus rewards back in 2007, when those hotshots could still pretend that they were running sound businesses.

The economy is anything but sound, but you would hardly know that from looking at the balance sheets of the big investment banks. The broker-dealer firms on Wall Street made a record profit, estimated at greater than $55 billion by the comptroller, and the only thing holding back even more grotesque bonuses was concern over criticism from a public that was hardly doing as well.

The enormous rewards last year come not from their having righted the ship of finance by lowering the rate of mortgage foreclosures for ordinary folks, one of four who are now “underwater” on their loans. Consumer confidence this month is the lowest in 27 years, and unemployment is expected to hover near 10 percent for the next two years. No, they get bonuses because the Federal Reserve, backed by the Treasury, bought the toxic mortgage securitization packages that Wall Street banks were left holding. They, and they alone, were made whole.

The way the scam worked is that the Treasury deposited taxpayer dollars with the Federal Reserve, which in turn purchased a whopping $1.25 trillion in toxic mortgages. That’s the figure after the Treasury on Tuesday committed to depositing $200 billion more with the Fed to increase spending on this program—one that was ostensibly designed to increase credit availability to small businesses and others but has hardly accomplished that goal. Credit is still very tight because the big financiers have used the low-cost cash they received from those charitable government programs to solidify their own positions through acquisitions and the like.

those of us privileged to live in the united states (and i say "privileged" because, despite the abominations taking place in my country, it's still a much better place to live overall than so many other places, places such as kosovo, for example, where i am currently sitting, writing this post) are understandably loath to face facts when they undermine the glorious image of our country that's been pounded into our heads from the time we learned to talk... but, it's a fact... we're being robbed, virtually at gunpoint, as mr. scheer rightly points out... however, we must also understand that it's not just us getting the shaft... these same people are perpetrating the same financial and economic devastation around the world... what's more, they serve as role models for such behavior... how, for instance, can i do effective work here in kosovo, a country awash in corruption and self-serving behavior from its leaders, when everyone can see what's happening in the very country that's preaching ethics and responsible behavior... it's maddening...

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Our destitute working class

chris hedges is a staunch defender of unions...

while i would be the last one to say that unions haven't had a hand in our economic collapse and aren't guilty of pursuing their own self-preservation without regard for the effectiveness or profitability of the organizations who employ their members, i also know that systematic union genocide leaves ordinary employees defenseless against what is increasingly clear are the insatiable predators that constitute our corporate state... i also have little doubt that those predators have waged and are waging a ceaseless campaign to rid their world of those pesky unions who might, just might, affect their precious bottom line...

Our destitute working class is beginning to grasp that Barack Obama and other elected officials in Washington, who speak in a cloying feel-your-pain language, are liars. They are not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. Treasury or jobs from being exported. The gap between our stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities and fatuous academic and financial experts, as well as oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore. Those cast aside are reaching out to anyone, no matter how buffoonish or ignorant, who promises that the parasites and courtiers who serve the corporate state will disappear. Right-wing rage is being fused with right-wing populism. And once this takes hold, a protofascism will sweep across our blighted landscape fueled by a mounting personal and economic despair. Take a look at Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” It is a good window into what awaits us.

“One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out,” the philosopher Richard Rorty warns in his book “Achieving Our Country.” “Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”

Whoever rides to power on the back of this rage will swiftly broker a deal with corporations and corporate overlords. But by then it will be too late. Dissent will become a form of treason. The security state will be quickly cemented in place. The bankrupt liberal class, which abandoned the working class and the fight for basic civil liberties, will be reviled, discredited and impotent. America will develop its own peculiar form of Christian fascism.

Obama, entranced with power and prestige, is more interested in courting the elite than saving the disenfranchised. The president, when asked to name a business executive he admires, cited Frederick Smith of FedEx, although Smith is a union-busting Republican. Smith, who was a member of Yale’s secret Skull & Bones Society along with George W. Bush, served as John McCain’s finance chair. I guess Obama is hoping for some cash. And Smith has a lot of it. He founded FedEx in 1971, and the company had more than $35 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ended in May. Smith is rich and powerful, but there is no ethical system, religious or secular, that would hold him up as a man worthy of emulation. Those who make vast profits at the expense of workers and the common good are not moral. They are not worthy of adulation. They build fortunes and little monuments to themselves off the pain and suffering of [other] people... . Jesus called them “vipers.”

there's plenty more to the article, much of it, i'm afraid, i'm in complete agreement with, not because i think it's a good forecast, but because i see a lot of it playing out in front of my very eyes...

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David Sirota makes an excellent point - it's our own "gilded liberals" who are killing health care

hard on the heels of the previous post...

david sirota in truthdig...

To review: With 22,000 Americans dying each year because they lack health insurance, Congress is considering universal health care legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000—that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1-percenters. This surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion the 1-percenters received from the Bush tax cuts. In fact, it is so minuscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year—or nine-tenths of 1 percent of their 12-month haul.

Nonetheless, the 1-percenters have deployed an army to destroy the initiative before it makes progress.

The foot soldiers are the Land Rover Liberals. These Democratic lawmakers secure their lefty labels by wearing pink-ribbon lapel pins and supporting good causes like abortion rights. However, being affluent and/or from affluent districts, they routinely drive their luxury cars over middle-class economic interests. Hence, this week’s letter from Boulder, Colo., dot-com tycoon Rep. Jared Polis, D, and other Land Rover Liberals calling for the surtax’s death.

Echoing that demand are the Corrupt Cowboys—those like Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who come from the heartland’s culturally conservative and economically impoverished locales. These cavalrymen in both parties quietly build insurmountable campaign war chests as the biggest corporate fundraisers in Congress. At the same time, they publicly preen as jes’ folks, make twangy references to “voters back home,” and now promise to kill the health care surtax because they say that’s what their communities want. Cash payoffs made, re-elections purchased, the absurd story somehow goes that because blue-collar constituents in Flyover America like guns and love Jesus, they must also reflexively adore politicians who defend 1-percenters’ bounty.

That fantastical fairly tale, of course, couldn’t exist without the Millionaire Media—the elite journalists and opinion-mongers who represent corporate media conglomerates and/or are themselves extremely wealthy. Ignoring all the data about inequality, they legitimize the assertions of the 1-percenters’ first two battalions, while actually claiming America’s fat cats are unfairly persecuted.

For example, Washington Post editors deride surtax proponents for allegedly believing “the rich alone can fund government.” Likewise, Wall Street Journal correspondent Jonathan Weisman wonders why the surtax “soak(s) the rich” by unduly “lumping all of the problems of the finances of the United States on 1 percent of (its) households?” And most brazenly, NBC’s Meredith Vieira asks President Obama why the surtax is intent on “punishing the rich.”

For his part, Obama has responded with characteristic coolness—and a powerful counterstrike. “No, it’s not punishing the rich,” he said. “If I can afford to do a little bit more so that a whole bunch of families out there have a little more security, when I already have security, that’s part of being a community.”

If any volley can thwart this latest attack of the 1-percenters, it is that simple idea.

the super-rich elites ain't going down without a fight and, from my perspective, it looks like they're winning handily...

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