Sunday, March 22, 2009

Greedheads planned all along to do us in

Matt Taibbi nails it in Rolling Stone:

...people are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

For entire article, go to Rolling Stone.

2 comments:

RobertP said...

Damn, Mike, great article, thanks for the link. I am proud to be working for one of the great community banks, UMB Financial Corp. Our chairman wrote Paulson to refuse any TARP or other government funds and told him he was rewarding the bad guys.

UMB has no exposure to any of the bad stuff, increased our loans last year and had record profits doing things the right way. On top of that UMB is working hard to be a good employer and treat the employees well. I wish they would do more to point out the good banks that have done it the right way. It is insane that no one has gone to jail over this or had to forfeit all their possessions.

Ok, off my soap box now.

Michael Shay said...

You're right. There are many community banks that had no hand in this and have been above-board the whole time. I know a few bankers in Cheyenne and they are a bit baffled to be thrown into the same pot as the greedheads at A.I.G. and other huge "investment banks." Let's put the blame in the right place. And patronize banks that value their communities.