Forum Post: Wall Street Couldn't Have Done It Alone
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 10, 2011, 10:16 p.m. EST by darrenlobo
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No bank or group of banks could do these things on its own in a freed market. It requires a government–Wall Street partnership — the corporate state — to create such misery and exploitation. The corporate state is nothing new in American history. Politicians across the spectrum have long instituted policies that benefit big banks and big business generally, and they have dressed those policies either in free-market (Republicans) or progressive (Democrats) rhetoric to lull the people into acquiescence. The result is an overgrown government that bestows privileges on the well-connected and then regulates on their behalf. The rest of the population pays and suffers.
I love Brooklyn Born and Elizabeth Warren and may they be empowered to give orders to stupid white men.
Absolutely right! The real culprits are our elected officials. They say one thing and do the opposite as often as not. Let's make them sign a contract to do as they say. Jail em for fraud when they don't.
Wall St my ass... you really think our justice department could not screw any person or any corporate entity it wanted to, based on suspicion if they wanted to?
It is true that the necessary tool of regulation and been turned into a weapon to use against us. This is one case where we shouldn't blame the tool. Blame the folks who filed off the part that turned it into the machine gun AND the guys who fired it AND the guys who benefited from the crime. Now we need to focus on enhancing the tool so they can't do it again.
Face the nature of the beast, brightonsage. There is no such thing as good govt. It will always turn on the people:
"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, 'What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor."
— St. Augustine, City of God [Circa 420 A.D.]
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. The life of a pirate is good for movies, but lice, and hardtack, and scurvy, and murder get tiresome after a while. Everyone needs to be able to come home from the sea.
I am older than you, no doubt, but I have seen a lot of government (warts and blemishes, to be sure) some, particularly at the local level, that is pretty good, but certainly better than the alternative, which I have also seen to much of. I'm just trying to pay it forward.
If you have ever been part of a team that got it right (football, music, a startup business, etc.) you might say it is worth considerable effort.
Register as a Republican and vote Ron Paul in the primaries. Then vote Ron Paul in the national election to start changing this corrupt system.
I agree, we need to have a whole new system, with sound money like gold/silver/copper
The moral of the story is stop advocating more of the problem.
You are correct but correctly choosing what to throw out is like cleaning your closet. Babies and bathwater might be a better analogy. Nobody wants teenage bathwater but kids are fun.