This is a response to The Atlantic's provocative essay by Simon Johnson titled "The Quiet Coup" regarding the political and financial imbalance by Wall Street and how and why it contributed to "The Great Collapse" or "Great Global Recession". Thank you Simon for your overview and penetrating piece. The result again is a forewarning that are also the tidings that Roubini and Krugman are exclaiming right now in different ways.

The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump "cannot be as bad as the Great Depression." This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression--because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

Now here is the simplest quotient: It is the elites who caused this. It is the elites who have benefited to date. It is the elites who are being made whole without hair cuts or other redistribution's or punitive measures while just look at the auto industry and the Midwest's systemic unemployment where fundamental reorganization is being demanded as a prerequisite for any effort.

William Greider of The Nation and WaPo stated so succinctly on Friday night on Bill Moyer's PBC Show that Obama (and his Administration) must eventually make a decision between America's Elite and America's ordinary person. That the social, political and financial reorganization that will emerge will either further institutionalize the financial corporate oligarthy as America's government or will fundamentally re-democratize America. The problem for Obama is not his instincts, as he already twice chose ordinary Americans over Wall Street's elites in his adult life. His instincts to get out of the DC Beltway even in his first 60 days is commendable. But the trouble is, the very basic thing about DC and the Presidency is that we go out and place elites in all those positions----elites think first about being an elite and staying an elite.

This is no different than the fabled stories like The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Elderslie by the minstrel Blind Harry that found Robert the Bruce, the eventual King of Scotland conflicted between incrementally increasing his noble gains and uniting the clans and repelling the scourge from England and its Longshanks. In that fable poem Robert the Bruce yearned for the feelings of real leadership that William Wallace demonstrated and finally Robert chose to stand with the ordinary clansman and not the nobles winning the Battle of Bannockburn and Scotland's freedom.

These and other lore's like Robin Hood all point to the overthrow of the elites corruption and unsustainablility. In our modern times this too must be understood and yet as Simon Johnson prophesizes is that the "Great Collapse" cannot be stopped. Within the suffering will also provide the opportunity and necessity to actually reorganize and rebuild the global society.

In my mind, throw them all out. I know we have smart enough people who can reconstitute our society's new capitalism instead of crony capitialism. It is the simple solution to a complex problem that is complex by only trying to keep whole insolvent banks, bankrupt finance companies, corrupt governing bodies, self-serving elites who want to be bail out while we bail.  It them who drove society off the cliff, they don't get the keys anymore.