Business reporter Leela de Kretser heaps scorn on Matt Taibbi for telling people things that were already common knowledge in the financial press about the Goldman Sachs vampire squid (never going to get tired of that phrase):
... Thanks to reporters at The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the New York Post, we already knew Goldman Sachs alumni had positions in governments and influential bodies around the world.
[We knew they were] the biggest contributor to Barack Obama's presidential run ... profited more than any other bank during the sub-prime mortgage mess ... been part of talks about whether to keep its competitor Lehman Brothers afloat ...
Unlike Mr Taibbi, we knew all of this - and didn't think it amounted to sinister conspiracy. Instead we thought this is what the biggest guy on The Street does.
The word 'conspiracy' doesn't appear in the original piece, The Great American Bubble Machine. It's just that when you describe it like this, all the greed and influence-peddling and market manipulation sounds bad to the masses:
Geithner claims that over a course of months, he couldn't figure out a way to stop the AIG bonuses; a period of time during which he told Congress that they didn't need to put the force of federal law behind executive compensation restraint. Union employees' contracts don't matter, banking employees' contracts supercede the federal government's 80 percent ownership stake in AIG and the expressed will of the President and the legislature. While mark-to-market regulations on the financial industry were eased today, the automakers had to prove themselves with detailed business plans.
So Congress ends up demanding in the law that the unemployed be accountable for looking for work, but Bush's Treasury guy gets off with a pledge and a sternly worded letter. Help for homeowners and single parents on food stamps needs to be vetted so that aid only goes to the deserving, but millions in taxpayer-funded bonuses can be given without strings to the very people who blew up the entire world financial system.
There are only two explanations for this persistent pattern of screwing working class interests. One is that the most politically connected people in the country know less about what's going on than we do. The other is that things are unfolding as they want and expect, but they'll pretend to be outraged if that seems necessary.
And we, we are supposed to believe the accident of naivete option. Right. And that bruised up neighbor who lives in the house with all the screaming fights, she falls down the stairs a lot.
STATE BLOGS
