Montana Maven's
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I can only scrub my rancher husband's dirty jeans so much before I despair of ever getting them clean of the cow manure, real bull shit, and diesel fuel.  That's the way I'm looking at this system of ours.

In answer to a comment over at openleft that stated that all we need is a really strong Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to clean up the mess on Wall Street, I replied:

"No amount of New Deal regulation or SEC-watching could have stopped what happened", says Tom Geoghegan in this month's "Harper's" story "Infinite Debt". "Yes, we should have more regulators, many more;  but as long as capital gushes into the financial sector, the speculators, the gamblers, will continue to outnumber the regulators who can watch them."

Geoghegan points to taking the cap off interest rates on credit cards i.e. usury.  Usury has been a sin since Babylonian times.  But we let it out of the box in the late 1970s. With the attack on unions and then loss of manufacturing as companies were forced into Chapter 11 so that workers lost their pensions, more cheap money flooded into the U.S.

Instead of using that capital to make things, it went to the financial sector to be gambled.  The best and brightest went to work for the masters of the universe while workers needed two incomes and traded their union cards for credit cards to make ends meet.

Obama was vetted by these guys.  They found him willing to work in their system.  He had a cursory knowledge of economics and so became enthralled with the Chicago Boys and their swagger.  He should not have been dazzled by a smuck like Summers who just spouts the old Friedman feudalism flim flam.  But he was dazzled by Robert Rubin and Rubin's vast network of proteges that included Geithner, Summers, Furman, and heads of the hedge funds.

If he doesn't fire them all, he will go down.  They, however, will remain in control and stay rich.  We are experiencing the Shock Doctrine.  No amount of spin can wash this clean.  Only throwing out the filthy dirty manure  and gas soaked clothes will make us whole again.  Of course, that means running around buck naked until we can weave some new cloth, but maybe that's a good thing.