If you missed Dylan Ratigan's interview today with Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) -- well you missed a lot!
They spell out in stark relief the very REAL need for serious Wall Street Regulation -- NOW! (and still!)
Or we risk a repeat of the same Bubble-driven collapse of Trillion Dollar Derivative Bets, that occur in the dark, beyond the reach -- or even the Watch -- of any Govt Regulator, or even the Public scrutinity.
Nothing has changed, they can STILL Gamble Trillions in Derivatives, and let US the Taxpayers pick up the Tab, whenever their Bets GO Bad!
FRONTLINE INVESTIGATES THE ROOTS OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS
FRONTLINE Presents
The Warning
Tuesday, October 20, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS
In the devastating aftermath of the economic meltdown, FRONTLINE sifts through the ashes for clues about why it happened and examines critical moments when it might have gone much differently.
In The Warning, airing Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check local listings), veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown, Breaking the Bank) unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multi-trillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities economists just confirmed the trends of the last 8 years -- Most of the the Economic Gains went to the very Wealthy, while the rest of us struggled to just get by
Two-thirds of the nation's total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.
During those years, the Piketty-Saez data also show, the inflation adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households grew more than ten times faster than the income of the bottom 90 percent of households.
I'm just back from seeing Michael Moore's new movie, "Capitalism - A Love Story".
It was moving, funny, and educational, all rolled into one. It made me feel both, proud and sad, to be an American. ... but it's recommended viewing if you still want to take OUR Country back, from the Powers that Be.
There are many lessons to be learned from the film -- But the one that struck me, the one I'm motivated to write about now --
Left to their own devices, Private Interests will UNDERCUT the Public Interest, most every time!
That's what the Profit Motive is all about -- it cares more about the interests of ME, instead of the well-being of the WE, from which Societies are built.
Usually they trade their knowledge, for money or power, and no one notices --
But not always:
Insider-Trading Ring Bust May Fuel Hedge-Fund Concern By David Scheer - March 2, 2007
March 2, (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government's accusations that Morgan Stanley, UBS AG and Bear Stearns Cos. employees were central figures in an insider-trading ring illustrate why regulators and lawmakers are suspicious of Wall Street's relationship with hedge funds.
Prosecutors in New York and Washington yesterday brought criminal charges against 13 people, claiming that an executive at UBS and a former compliance lawyer at Morgan Stanley tipped off hedge-fund traders and brokers to new analyst ratings and secret takeover talks. Bear Stearns was home to at least four professionals who traded on information leaked from inside the two firms, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
White Collar Crime, is not any less heinous, because they commit it with a Keyboard, instead of a Handgun. Yet more often than not, in the Wild West of electronic casinos, these criminals can make "a killing", without having to pull that trigger themselves ... without ever having to worry about ever facing their "day in court" ...
A couple of the things corporate America and the Republican Party are always using to exuse their greedy actions is "The Free Market" and "Capitalism". Both groups are eternally determined to make us believe that having a middle-class in America would destroy both. However, it is nice every now and then to see some truly delicious irony. Now it seems as if working folks might actually use that Capitalist system we always here about against the very people who preach it.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for a second term, delivered at Philadelphia on 27 June 1936, said, "The economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power."
