[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="219" caption="Cover of Wall Street (20th Anniversary Edition)"]
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Just yesterday I was fantasizing that the criminals who are still making record profits by turning the entire US economy into a "house of cards" would finally come to justice. As I fantasized online, thousands of people gathered on Wall Street to demand that the bankers be held accountable for wrecking the US economy and forced to funnel some of the huge Wall St. bailout money back to helping the Main St. they destroyed.
The protest, led by the AFL-CIO, was apparently on point in its message: "Less Audis, More Audits" and "Wall St.: Never Again." In other words, time to demand regulation of a financial industry that has brought the US economy and much of the world crashing down even as its leaders continue to earn record salaries. And they earn these salaries by charging ordinary Americans ridiculously high interest rates on debt even while they live on taxpayer bailouts at ridiculously low interest rates.
Apparently the bankers watching were unmoved by the protest. According to one of the bankers:
These guys just want money. They want to tax Wall Street, which would be a disaster for the economy, to fund their bullshit public sector union jobs. God, I hate the labor agenda."Yeah, right. These guys, being people who work off of Wall Street, are providing actual goods and services but they "just want money" while the schmucks on Wall St., who give us NOTHING but charge us an arm and a leg for it ,just want what? Peace and prosperity for all? Most of the AFL-CIO people at the protest work in public sector jobs like making the subway run every morning without making it so expensive that ordinary people can't afford to go to school. And public sector work is "bad for the economy" but letting these guys suck us all dry with taxpayer bailouts and corporate tax rates that can only be described as corporate welfare is good for the economy? This is exactly the sort of "greed is good" stupidity that led to this mess in the first place- that and the fact that our representatives in Washington backed away from their role as regulators. As an economist friend once explained the lack of federal regulation of the market to me, it is like allowing two siblings, Billy and Sally, to go outside to sell cookies and milk. Sally made the cookies; Billy took the milk from the 'frig. While mom and dad are inside not paying attention (i.e. the federal government), Billy whacks Sally over the head, sells her to a passing trucker, and takes all the milk and cookie profits for himself. This is what the American economy has been like. Billy/Wall St. are so greedy that they would sell their own sister (us) to the highest bidder and reap all the profits for themselves. This is exactly what Goldman Sachs did when they created subprime mortgages for little Sally, then simultaneously bet against Sally's ability to pay off those loans. Goldman Sachs and a variety of Wall Street firms have committed crimes against ordinary Americans like you and me and Sally and it's time that they pay. So the parents/ the Feds have finally come out of the house to see what the hell is going on. That's why the Security and Exchange Commision is now seeking criminal charges for Goldman Sachs. This call for criminal charges comes one day after lawmakers sent a letter to the Department of Justice calling for a criminal investigation. It will be a good day for the American economy and the American people when the banker robber barons are finally made to pay us back AND serve some time in prison for the many crimes they have committed. That's when we can finally break out the cookies and milk - not for profit- but to celebrate ourselves as a community of citizens who are all in this together.