"They" did it

[Robin Landseadel]

What 'we' always suspected

Robert Scheer sorts out the details:

	They did it.

	Yes, there is a "they": the captains of finance, their lobbyists,
	and allies among leading politicians of both parties, who 	
	together destroyed an American regulatory system that had
	been functioning splendidly for most of the six decades since it
	was enacted in the 1930s.

	The big cop-out in much of what has been written about the
	banking meltdown has been the argument by those most
	complicit that there was "enough blame to go around" and that
	no institution or individual should be singled out for
	accountability. "How could we have known?" is the refrain of
	those who continue to pose as all-knowing experts. "Everybody 	
	made mistakes," they say.

	Nonsense. This was a giant hustle that served the richest of the
	rich and left the rest of us holding the bag, a life-altering game
	of musical chairs in which the American public was the one
	forced out. Worst of all, legislators from both political parties we
	elect and pay to protect our interests from the pirates who
	assaulted us instead changed our laws to enable them.

	The most pathetic of excuses is the one provided by Robert
	Rubin, who fathered "Rubinomics," the economy policy of
	President Clinton's two-term administration: The economy ran
	into a "perfect storm," a combination of unforeseen but
	disastrously interrelated events. This rationalization is all too
	readily accepted by the mass media, which is not surprising,
	given that it neatly absolves the majority of business reporters
	and editors who had missed the story for years until it was too
	late.

	The facts are otherwise. It is not conspiratorial but rather
	accurate to suggest that blame can be assigned to those who
	consciously developed and implemented a policy of radical
	financial deregulation that led to a global recession. As
	President Clinton's Treasury secretary, Rubin, the former
	cochair of Goldman Sachs, led the fight to free the financial
	markets from regulation and then went on to a $15-million-a-
	year job with Citigroup, the company that had most
	energetically lobbied for that deregulation. He should
	remember the line from the old cartoon strip Pogo: "We have
	met the enemy and he is us." . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/the-great-american-sticku_b_715928.html