Betting on a Global Crapshoot

(Artwork: James Fryer / The Economist)

truthout.org has a very pertinent piece by Steve Weissmann on all that money being thrown at US banks:

"You have to hand it to Wall Street. It wreaks havoc on the global economy, and the rest of us - as taxpayers - prop it up so that it can do it all over again.

We give the Wall Street banks trillions of dollars in bailout money, and they still fail to do their job, which is to loosen credit and provide the liquidity that businesses and consumers need. A major hedge fund - Cerberus Capital - plays chicken with President Obama in his effort to save Chrysler. Bankers spend millions lobbying to stop Congress from providing help to homeowners facing foreclosure. And, having failed to stop a Credit Card Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives, the banksters now aim to kill it in the Senate.

Because Bank of America, CitiBank, AIG, Goldman Sachs and the others are "too big to fail," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner continues to redistribute astronomical sums of money from taxpayers to these giants of finance capitalism. And, predictably, they use our money to remain too big to fail as they extend their power in the most predictable ways."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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