Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

[Crewleader]

The Intoxication of Larry Summers April 8, 2009

Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

By BILL MOYERS and MICHAEL WINSHIP

A cartoon in the Sunday comics shows that mustachioed fellow with monocle and top hat from the Monopoly game - "Rich Uncle Pennybags," he used to be called - standing along the roadside, destitute, holding a sign: "Will blame poor people for food."

Time to move the blame to where it really belongs. That means no more coddling banks with bailout billions marked "secret." no more allowing their executives lavish bonuses and new corporate jets as if they've won the megalottery and not sent the economy down the tubes. And no more apostles of Wall Street calling the shots.

Which brings us to Larry Summers. Over the weekend, the White House released financial disclosure reports revealing that Summers, director of the National Economic Council, received $5.2 million last year working for a $30 billion hedge fund. He made another $2.7 million in lecture fees, including cash from such recent beneficiaries of taxpayer generosity as Citigroup, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. The now defunct financial services giant Lehman Brothers handsomely purchased his pearls of wisdom, too.

Reading stories about Summers and Wall Street you realize the man was intoxicated by the exotic witches' brew of derivatives and other financial legerdemain that got us into such a fine mess in the first place. Yet here he is, serving as gatekeeper of the information and analysis going to President Obama on the current collapse. We have to wonder, when the President asks, "Larry, who did this to us?" is he going to name names of old friends and benefactors? Knowing he most likely will be looking for his old desk back once he leaves the White House, is he going to be tough on the very system of lucrative largesse that he helped create in his earlier incarnation as a de-regulating Treasury Secretary? ("Larry?" "Yes, Mr. President?" "Who the hell recommended repealing the Glass-Steagall Act back in the 90s and opened the floodgates to all this greed?" "Uh, excuse me, Mr. President, I think Bob Rubin's calling me.")

http://www.counterpunch.org/moyers04082009.html

[sendero]

1. I cannot WAIT..

... until J6P, the Sheeple, the Average American and plenty of folks right here on this board figure out that we are getting ROBBED.

It is THAT SIMPLE. We, our kids, and their kids are being hijacked to pay for the failed gambles of Wall Street. Had the gambles paid off, we wouldn't have seen one cent of it. Why should be pay now?

It is sickening that people are willing to put up with it and astounding that anyone would believe this is the only or best solution.

[Crewleader]

3. I hear what you are saying sendero

...remember what George Carlin once told us, really loved him...
I think of it with the times we are facing...

In his own words:

“The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They’ve got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.”

“But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

“You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they’re coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.”

“This country is finished.”

[Po_d Mainiac]

5. K&R n/t

[girl gone mad]

2. k&r

[dgibby]

4. Thanks for posting this.

I voted for Obama,and I believe he's brilliant, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why he thinks the people who were stupid enough to get us into this mess are the only ones smart enough to get us out.

[northernlights]

7. the people that got us into this mess are not stupid

they are greedy.

They are very, very, very clever thieves. And when push comes to shove, they are thugs. Oh, they won't pull the trigger themselves. They'll just hire someone who will hire someone to do it.

They knew the meltdown would come sooner or later. Doesn't matter. They wrote the rules, they knew this day would come and their plans for the next step were already in place. That's why we're *always* playing catchup and they're *always* one step ahead. They made the rules, they set the trap, they know which way the peons will scatter in panic. They probably even have set up the more traditional boobytrapped escape routes.

It mattered to the politicians who "won" or "lost" the election, but not to the gangst...er, banksters. I'm beginning to suspect they've got Obama by the balls, too. Either that, or they've hypnotized him.

I remember years ago there was a wallstreet guy (don't remember his name, but he's pretty famous) that would round up large shareholders of failing companies, and go to the failing companies' CEOs and put the screws to them.

One day he came to my company's (Digital Equipment) CEO (Bob Palmer) when it was heading down. Rumors flew around the company. And then he came out of their meeting and told the world that Bob had a plan and he was happy with it. And a couple years later, DEC entered a shotgun marriage with Compaq and endured a few years of massive infighting and downsizing, before HP took over Compaq. Somewhere in the middle, Bob jumped off with a $40M parachute.

The thing is, the way this guy worked is he went to the CEO and gave him a choice: you can do what I tell you (sell out the employees that made this company great) and we'll give you tens (nowadays hundreds) of millions. Or I'll see to it that you never work in this or any other industry again. You'll be lucky to get a job flipping burgers.

Well, Bob Palmer took his $40M and ran. Rumor is he spent a couple years living on a plane, flying from place to place, surrounded by bodyguards, due to the threats against his life by fucked over employees.

Bottom line, they are thugs and thieves and that is how they operate.

[GoesTo11]

6. Summers is smart, but not wise

You can really see him dripping with glee at how many opportunities and how many benefits he has in this life. New money, basically.