We've Met the Suckers: It's a Mirror

Several articles on the dismal--yes, I said dismal--financial straits we're in. We're still in. Here's one that says "Bank bailouts move forward at warp speed while regulatory reform sputters along in the slow lane. Which is just the way Wall Street wants it. Its motto is: if it's broke (but you keep bailing us out), why fix it?" Indeed. Isn't anybody else getting fed up with this? I'm beginning to think we're the biggest suckers in the universe. P. T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute." I don't think he ever imagined an entire country could be composed of nothing but.

And then there's this, from Salon: " If there is a single act showing how kleptocracy and let-them-eat-cake-ism are systemic and local rather than momentary and exclusively federal, Bloomberg turning the House that Ruth Built into the House That Taxpayers Built is it." All about how billionaire Big Apple mayor Michael Bloomberg "used various public agencies to extract between $1 billion and $4 billion from taxpayers and then spent the cash on a new stadium for the Yankees, the wealthiest corporation in sports." Read all about it, sports fans. Try to wrap your head around this, the bottom line being, the damn Yankees aren't paying a penny for the $1.3 billion stadium: " . . . the city owns the stadium, leases it to an agency, which then leases it to a corporate subsidiary, which then leases it to the Yankees. At the end of the Ponzi scheme, the team is permitted to use the taxes it already owes to pay off the mortgage on its new chateau." Where's the outrage? Nowhere to be seen. Gone fishing. On vacation. Who knows?

Here's the gist of another piece reporting how thoroughly we're getting screwed by Wall Street and the banks: "The strength of the financial sector and its interlocking allies in insurance and real estate has been repeatedly demonstrated over the past year: Despite near universal agreement that actions of the industry inflicted untold harm on the American and global economies, the Bush and Obama administrations have treated captains of finance with velvet gloves, and Congress, especially the Senate, has consistently deferred to the powerful financial lobby." It's called "crony capitalism."

Heads they win, tails we lose. It's the ongoing theme.