This thing keeps getting better and better. This time it was M’s turn to cross the continent and spend a few days in my neck of the woods. We did some exploring around the South Street Seaport, the High Line Park, and all the way up to the Cloisters. Manhattan, tip to tip. Just maybe I can convince her she likes it here. She looks pretty happy, yes? And me grinning like a loon.
Now I’m plain angry. The GOP (there’s nothing grand about it) is so far up Wall Street’s ass they have zero interest in the public they claim to serve. On the very day Goldman Sachs announces over $5 billion in bonuses the GOP asserts it will filibuster Democratic action to regulate responsibility in Wall Street.
Obstinacy? Incompetency? How about greed. The stereotype of the Republican representative is old, white, and wealthy, and they seem gleefully eager to embrace it. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the only conceivable reason to oppose Wall Street regulation is to preserve the gaping holes of financial exploitation that led to the loss of 8 million jobs. It’s plain as day to anyone not gulping the GOP rhetoric Kool Ade. You don’t even have to be politically minded at all, much less a Democrat.
Goldman Sachs is being charged with fraud on a massive (massive) scale. From that same article in the Huff Post:
The U.S. charges against Goldman Sachs relate to a complex investment tied to the performance of pools of risky mortgages. In a complaint filed Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Goldman marketed the package to investors without disclosing that the pools were picked by another client, a prominent hedge fund that wanted to bet the U.S. housing bubble would burst. Within months, most of the mortgages had been downgraded as the U.S. housing boom went into reverse and the securities fell sharply in value.
To paraphrase, Goldman Sachs told consumer-level investors to buy a package investment including defaulting mortgages. At the same time, GS represented the same package to a hedge fund (large large money) that was betting against it. To put it another way, GS used the little guy to inflate the value of junk, so the big guy could make a boatload when that junk collapsed under its own junkiness.
Nice. The Republican party would have us believe that imposing regulation on the financial sector will somehow cause financial collapse, rather than protect us from it. As though it really hadn’t just happened because of lack of regulation. In all the world, Canada was least internally affected by the crisis, and it is demonstrably because of more strict oversight in the financial sector. Regulation.
Canada has a working socialized health care system too, courtesy of the NDP. Maybe the Republicans just hate Canada?
It used to be that I could justify the actions of the GOP by saying they believe they are defending Freedom (capitol F) no matter who gets crushed along the way. It’s painfully clear that the very corrupt GOP is deep in the pockets of the very corrupt Wall Street, and that includes Insurance and Big Pharma. I guess Freedom means you can use your position as Representative of the People to gouge those People for every penny you can swindle.
How much more clear can they make it?
Is it too Canadian? Read More »
