The biggest problem with our relentless economic catastrophe is that we're locked into it and out of it. The only people who can figure out the mess and how to fix it are the people who got us in the mess in the first place - in the same way we're constantly reminded that banks and financial companies are too big to fail. If they go down, they take the rest of us with them.

Conventional Wisdom 101.

But if the same geniuses who designed the shell game - to satisfy never-satiated greed - are in charge of its repair, what's to keep them from designing this crucial restoration in a way that... satisfies their never-satiated greed.

Obviously, nothing.

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Last year, the seemingly endless race for the Democratic nomination between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was relieved momentarily from slack-jawed, drool-drip boredom when Clinton told an interviewer, "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran...In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

This little exercise in smack-talk diplomacy drew a brief hubbub of empty yack from the press and on cable shows, and then it was scrubbed for the duration of campaign reporting. Most censure attracted by Clinton pointed to the remark's tactlessness, suggesting her foreign policy naivete' and the childish inexperience of Democrats, in general. Aside from liberal blogs, TPM included, there were few darts aimed at the sentiment behind the remark; the idea of turning Iran into a vast, desolate Southwest Asian parking lot isn't completely unappealing for our Israel-centric mainstream media.

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