AlterNet: Wall St. and the Media Are Trying to Make Us Forget Who Started the Financial Crash

[marmar]

Wall St. and the Media Are Trying to Make Us Forget Who Started the Financial Crash

By Les Leopold, AlterNet. Posted May 20, 2009.

We're at the moment Wall Street has been waiting for: The time where we begin to forget who brought the economy down.



It’s fast approaching the time Wall Street has been waiting for: the time when the media and the public forget what got us into this economic mess. As massive doses of taxpayer Viagra lift the stock market ticker, we hold out hope that our 401k and pension plans will re-erect themselves along with our jobs. We feel stimulated by the stimulus package… and the morning after we forget. The crisis, whatever it was, is over, isn’t it? Surely, it’s time to move on.

Wall Street is praying that we forget how they broke open the Treasury vault to the tune of trillions in loan guarantees, subsidies and interest free money in addition to the more highly publicized TARP funds -- the largest transfer of wealth since African-American slaves built the South. It would be nice if we forgot about proposed wage caps on bankers. It would be nice if we stopped talking about ridiculous reforms and regulations that might prevent banker and hedge funds operators from walking off with hundreds of millions in private booty. Better to turn our attention to the auto industry. And maybe, if it all breaks just right, most of us might start to believe that the real problem all along was Detroit, rather than the wildest Wall Street casino ever created. It would be much better for the wealthy if we returned to one of our favorite pastimes: blaming autoworkers’ health care and pension benefits, or blasting big government for interfering in the economy.

Are we really going to forget? That depends on the severity of the crisis and it depends on our ability to understand it. Some see green shoots all around. (I would like to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge) I’m no soothsayer so I can’t tell you how long this crisis will last, or how much carnage it will cause, or even if the green shoots will be killed by all the financial toxic waste still polluting our economy. But I can help us remember its key characteristics: This crisis was the result of a total failure of financial markets. It wasn’t caused by consumers taking on too much debt, or a housing bubble, or uncompetitive industries. It was caused by financial markets run wild. It wasn’t caused by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or big government. It was caused because our leaders believed free-markets could run on their own. Greenspan, Rubin, Bernanke and scores of others both on Wall Street and in government (or in the revolving doors between them) proclaimed that the free-market always knows best. It was ok if the elite gained riches once reserved for royalty. It was ok because their prowess and ingenuity drove our economy to new heights. They were the financial innovators of the world. It was far better for America to produce new financial instruments than to make solar energy or efficient cars.

They were dead wrong. Left to its own devices, the financial system crashed. We gave them every kind of deregulation they wanted and they drove the economy off a cliff. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/140123/wall_st._and_the_media_are_trying_to_make_us_forget_who_started_the_financial_crash/

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Massive pain is the only thing that will make Americans focus

Sad as it is, most Americans WILL forget and begin to believe the MASSIVE amount of propaganda, misdirection and lies being served daily by our media in regard to the Wall Street criminal enterprise.

These folks are simply using the skills, techniques and messages that Madison Avenue created to sell diapers and soap for decades to hoodwink your average American into forgetting why this crisis occurred.

American media has become the greatest propaganda platform ever seen on this planet. It serves corporate interests and the wealthy elite solely.

[marmar]

2. "American media has become the greatest propaganda platform ever seen on this planet"

Totally agree.....Makes PRAVDA, the Chinese Govt. Information service and even the fictional one in "1984" look like Mickey Mouse operations.

[ShortnFiery]

3. The World saw that our USA Media Elites are merely whores for the Military Industrial Complex ...

"front and center" during the run up to the INVASIONS of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The WORLD Community has ZERO respect for the lion's share of the USA M$M.

[truedelphi]

18. That's probably a large reason why there was so little compliance with any of

Obama's requests when he was overseas - European leaders liked to rub shoulder to shoulder with him, but they don't want to inflict the crap on their populace that is allowed to be inflicted on us.

[tom_paine]

5. I couldn't have said it better myself. And I have been saying this very thing since 2001.

[Enthusiast]

6. +1, This is absolutely true.

Never before in world history has such a powerful propaganda machine been unleashed on a population. I have been pointing this out to my wife. She had today off so she was watching 'The View'. The View's guest? Glenn Beck. I said "Turn that fucker OFF!" She finds Beck (and Elizabeth) as distasteful as I do. Point is, their propaganda is so far reaching that it even extends to women's daytime TV. It is omnipresent.

[bemildred]

4. The crash is not over.

It's going to be hard to forget while it's still going on.

[truedelphi]

7. I'm sorry but almost everyone of both parties were in on it. Only 8 Senators

Including Dorgan of Nebraska voted agaisnt the repeal of The Glass Steagall Act. Without vaporizing the protections that Act provided, we would not have seen the demise of our economy.

Check out this URL to see the harm done to us and signed off on by Pres CLinton - The Gramm-Leach-Biley Act
http://tinyurl.com/qzuf7o

And few of those elected seem to have their panties in a knot over Geithner or Bernanke. I am glad to see that Alan Grayson (D) of Florida has gotten upset enough to challenge those supposedly providing some oversight of the Nine Trillion Dollar swindle, but he joins a small handful of others in Congress. The rest are bought out.

Almost all of the elected are part of the 1% elite. And thus we will continue to find ourselves continually, eternally, screwn.

[Stinger2]

8. The Third Party “ The Media” Danger Danger Will Robinson we have a Intruder!

The Third Party “ The Media” Danger Danger Will Robinson we have a Intruder!

Danger Danger Will Robinson we have a Intruder!!

The Third Party Republicans Media, CBS, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX, FOX BUSINESS Etc., Hundreds of Radio Stations, Magazines ….. They Bought the Bush Administration and want the Power Back no Matter the Cost.

They are the Wolfs in Sheep Clothing, “Beware”

Nothing is Yes, we are behind are President helping to dig out the Worst Administration in History of the USA its No to everything, more or less screw the Voters.

The Republicans with The Republican Media can take down are President! Just Say NO

[truedelphi]

14. You don't get it - this Presiddent is continuing the same policies that

Bush would have wanted. The war i Iraq will now be ended at t he 23 month mark, Geithner and Bernanke are very much like Paulson. Obama is a much more elegant face, but he is not for helping out the middle or lower classes.

One of the newest threads here at DU is about Obama appointing a Superfund Lawyer to head the oversight on polluting.

Meanwhile,in terms of our food supply, Velsick, who is in Monsanto's pockets, is the head of our Department of Agriculture.

[progressoid]

9. Dorgan of North Dakota.

Nebraska is blessed with Ben Nelson. :eyes:

Sometimes it's hard to tell all the centrists apart.

[Stinger2]

10. Three-card Monte

80% of the politicians are Republicans, no matter of the party affiliation. Remember Ronald Reagan switched parties, Zell Miller was a joke, Joe Lieberman became a independent to get his republican ass elected, Arnold Specter needs to go, another Republican playing three-card monte. The Blue Dogs are another bunch of bought and paid for on the fence ass holes.


Three-card Monte


Three-card Monte, is a confidence game in which the victim, or mark, is tricked into betting a sum of money that they can find the money card, for example the queen of hearts, among three face-down playing cards. In its full form, the three-card Monte is an example of a classic short con in which the outside man pretends to conspire with the mark to cheat the inside man, while in fact conspiring with the inside man to cheat the mark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-card_Monte

The Media is the Outside Man, while in fact conspiring with the inside man to cheat the mark (The mark is the Public.)

Just Keep Voting The Bums Out until they listen!!!!

[truedelphi]

17. I am glad to have an analogy like that to reference.

Although with three card monte, occassionally you get to win, right? (Though maybe Iam wrong about that.)

[Dr.Phool]

11. Yeah, we have the other asshole Nelson twin in Florida.

[Vidar]

12. K&R.

[lonestarlib]

13. "The crash is not over."

To forget one would have to assume that Wall Street is no longer engaging in its shady/illegal practices, that it's all a thing of the past. FT ran a piece last Friday about Geithner's effort to regulate derivatives that included this tidbit:

Take the case of credit derivatives. Tales are circulating on Wall Street that some unscrupulous traders have been manipulating the price of "single name" CDS contracts to hurt rivals, or make quick profits. It is also claimed that banks have been deliberately trying to push companies into bankruptcy, in locations ranging from Ukraine to the heartland of the US, to profit on CDS positions they secretly hold.

One senior banker, for example, described to me this week how the large Wall Street group where he recently worked had a trading desk that would "pick off" weak companies and hedge funds, by exploiting the murkiness and illiquidity of bilateral CDS deals to push prices around. "It disgusts me, and its still going on," he admitted.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3a923bf4-40e7-11de-8f18-00144feabdc0.html

[bemildred]

15. That's what's bizarre.

The basic strategy seems to be to keep the old game alive, to get another bubble going. There has been no capitulation yet, no admission that all the fake crap was fake crap. One does not know whether to invest or not; if they get another bubble up, you could make money, if there are not enough suckers out there, you could lose what you got left.

[Wednesdays]

16. K&R

:kick:

[KoKo]

19. Absolutely..."they" think we out here are "simple minded."

I tried to K&R but the timing was off...so a big
:kick: