Working Americans have seen their relatively meager 401 investments experience zero growth for eight years.

The only people who are being bailed out are the top 5%. The rest of us are not in the game being played by the Bush administration and Wall Street. That is unless you count how much the trillions added to the debt during the Bush years will affect the retirement of working Americans for decades to come. That has already been shot to hell so it doesn't make a bit of difference to us anymore. Our money has already been stolen and it isn't going to come back. No way. No how. The crooks have already absconded with it. And our government, instead of trying to get some back, is taking even more and giving it to the crooks.

Somebody has to pay for this screw up. Why shouldn't it be the persons who are the recipients of our sweat and toil?

I firmly believe that Wall Street figured their buddies in our government would bail them out. Just look at who the players are.

The markets are rising today.

We've just been held up for about a trillion dollars. Of course the markets have gone up. The crooks are celebrating.

The deregulation that has been the rule for some time had an intrinsic though unspoken corrolary. It says here's your freedom but if you screw it up it's on your dime. But then we are talking about thieves here so they have no honor. Reagan was a dumbass for opening the door that leads to striking  deals with a bunch of thieves.
 
Kind of like some republicans we know who agree to one thing and then after the deal is struck refuse to honor the commitment. Palin and the troopergate thingy. McCain and his first marriage. Just sayin'

And just another small thing. The MSM is TOTALLY on board. When have we seen that before.

Somebody pass me the vaseline.

One of the reasons we got into this mess is because mergers concentrated too much of the overall value of our financial marketplace into too few firms. It reduced competition and centralized control of investment dollars.

The fix that is being applied continues that same schema. What this means is the congress has to reverse and in a practical manner needs to increase market controls (regulation) to avoid a future reoccurrence of this same dilemma. As the nations finances become increasingly centralized (as is occurring here) it becomes very evident that the risk increases as well.

This creates a political problem from the standpoint of congress. The inadvertent collusion between Wall Street and congress because of the campaign finance scheme we have will make it difficult for congress to enact legislation that truly protects our financial system and investors. The McCains of the world, who prior to yesterday, were all in favor of letting the markets do whatever they wanted won't have truly changed their perspective on this. And in all fairness the deregulation of Wall Street didn't happen without the full cooperation of all our lawmakers.

This leaves me more than a little skeptical of the actions congress might take to alleviate a reoccurrence. We've been in this place time and again over the years. That leaves me with pretty much zero confidence that congress will actually get this right and make it stick.
 
I  recommend as many of you who care what happens in the coming years to write your congresspersons and senators and express your concern about this so that, just maybe, congress will act in good faith on behalf of the American people. I just don't forsee it happening otherwise. The public has to speak up or we are just as liable for what may happen as are our lawmakers.

As is the norm for republicans they just can't deal with the truth. And when it is spoken by one of their own, well lets just say their tolerance level for the truth is limited. Carly Fiorina was waved goobye to today by the McCain campaign and will be serving the RNC in a limited capacity from here on out. It has been reported that McCain was not pleased by Ms. Fiorina saying that neither McCain nor Palin could actually run a comapny. I guess you could logically extend that to mean neither could run the country.

What did McCain expect from a person with real (business) experience? The next time McCain talks about experience we can all laugh because has has shown he knows even less about meaningful job experience than economics. Or maybe with his rapidly dissolving memory he has forgotten what a real job is like. After all, it's been quite a long time since he had one. His only current qualification would be as a stand-in for a bullshit artist or a liar. And he's not even up to the standard set by Bush on that.

We now see the Governor of Alaska, just as we have seen the Bush administration, refuse subpoenas from a legally instituted body of government. In both cases this renders our legal system inoperative. This is an impossible state to find ourselves in because alleged violations of our laws are left without a remedy. This was never intended in any way shape or form. Nor can it logically exist in a government that wishes to retain a functioning rationale for legally constituted authority. What this really means is nobody is subject to any laws as they currently exist. It can mean no other.

The American taxpayer is being ripped off big time because of the failure of our government to properly regulate the banking and overall financial system.

It is time to get this industry out of the influence business when it comes to the relationship of this industry with the WH and the Congress. What we have doesn't work. What we have is criminal. But then we have a criminal in charge so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. 

I wonder if you were to gather a list of headlines since Bush has been in office looking for ones that talk about 'The Worst...', what it would look like and how long it would be.

How many books have already been written that are critical of the Bush years? I'd bet there are more of those about Bush, written while he is still in office than ever before.

Why are we making such a fuss over the lies of McCain and Palin?

Because George Bush lied us into a war that to date has cost 4,157 American lives.

I think that's a damn good reason to be fussy.

On the Sunday shows Alan Greenspan called the economic events a once in a half century occurrence. What a whopper. In the last fifty years the U.S. taxpayer have been called upon to bail out big business many times and at great cost. And he also said it is remarkable how well the non-financial parts of the country are doing. Why ABC has a senile old fart on who can't remember shit is beyond me.

Another whopper is George Will saying he would have gotten the Bush Doctrine question wrong. Yet a quick Google search refers us to Mr.Will discussing the doctrine by name and in explicit terms as far back as 2001.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/09/what_exactly_is_the_bush_doctr.asp

This is sick. No wonder we are in such deep shit. These people never see or talk to real people and live in a world untouched by any of the common realities shared by most Americans. The Sunday morning news shows are crap. And I could only stomach watching for a few minutes before I couldn't watch anymore.

Our financial system managers have so screwed up the economy and our banking system. Their only interests are profits and in that sense have again placed the nations finances at risk. That is why we have the mortgage meltdown. They have acted imprudently (like so many times before) and have been allowed to do so largely because the federal government has let them. The climate of deregulation of business has always resulted in major screwups which have consistently ended up hurting investors and has cost taxpayers untold billions (trillions?). It is past time to put a stop to this by regulating the hell out of the financial sector. How many times is this industry going to be allowed to fuck things up before our dumbasses in congress figure out the assholes will do the same thing over and over until congress actually makes them stop. I am sure that in my lifetime taxpayers have been whacked with at least a half trillion in bailout costs. And that says nothing about the money that deregulation has cost individual citizens from outrageous lending policies that have absolutely stripped consumers of any rights in the financial marketplace. Every time I see a merger of various players in this sector I want to puke. All that ever does is concentrate their power in the marketplace and disadvantage consumers. And to top this all off, every day the fed lends these major financial intitutions our money that these institutions then turn around and lend back to us at triple and quadruple the rate. WTF?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26672904/

I just read the NYT piece published Saturday evening and noticed afer reading it that Josh has posted about it at TPM. Josh is correct that it is a must read.

I've little doubt the Times checked this out carefully and wouldn't publish such a scathing article without making sure of what they are saying. There is undoubtedly some acrimony being built up in the MSM for things the McCain campaign is doing and this article reflects that. Even taking that into consideration though the Times paints an exceedingly ugly picture of Palin. I suspect things will get really nasty from here.

Assuming the Times has this correct Palin has no place on a presidential ticket of any political party. The mentality this brings into focus is seriously at odds with our democracy, our laws and our perceptions of right and wrong.

Even more than that though, the insight it provides into the judgement of McCain should elevate the doubt of those persons who might be considering to cast their ballot for him. I don't want to call this a hatchet job even though some people might view it as such. I see it more as an awakening of the MSM. Voters desperately need to have these insights. The Times is staking it's reputation on what they are saying here so I would be inclined to trust their reporting. The one thing they should have done is move it off the NY edition and page A1 to the national edition Sunday front page. This is of very pressing national interest and needs to be front and center.