"They" did it

[Joseph Tracy]

Good interview with Scheer on Democracy now some days back. He came  
too the subject with a good deal of knowledge, having written a book  
on the Fed called Secrets of the Temple.
On Sep 14, 2010, at 1:14 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> 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