I think that the conversation on the national level is beginning as usual to tear itself away from rational thought, towards the kind of feedback loop of nonsense we’ve come to expect. Local media, meanwhile, is noticeably absent from the entire conversation, which we’ve also come to expect. So, allow me to point out a few things that bear mentioning:
Regardless of the circumstances, the rich will never suffer. The rich never do. I’m not talking about your cousin Bob who is a stock broker for JP Morgan Chase. I’m talking about the real movers and shakers. The Vanderbilt’s, the Rockafellers, the names we don’t know and never will. The top executives at the top firms who went to the top schools and who’ve lived their entire lives at the top. This is not their economic crisis. They’ll be just fine.
It will be all our down-stream friends and family – what is popularly called Main Street, these days – that will suffer the consequences of whatever will come next. It’s our jobs that are hanging in the balance, our homes, our financial futures. Hell, it’s our tax money.
So when seen from this lens, how can it be anything other than right and proper that Congress put the brakes on and demand some sort of recompense from those we bail out? It’s not really about demanding things of other people, it’s about getting the change we want out of an opportunity to demand said change. It’s not about taking from the rich – they will lose nothing of value; its about securing our own futures. We can restore the Depression-era oversight and regulation that has kept our banking system on the straight and narrow since then – except in those times when Republicans have chosen to ignore them.
By-the-by: don’t get sucked into the refrain that regulations need to be “updated.” Even Barack Obama is saying that crap. “Updating” right and wrong is not needed. Enforcing it is.
And the answer is simple: in the words of Dean Baker, sell the company assets, and you’re in.
