Originally written by Jacek K. on October 21, 2009 5:52 PM From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20herbert.html?em: We cannot continue transferring the nation’s wealth to those at the apex of the economic pyramid — which is what we have been doing for the past three decades or so —

No! You don't say, and who is going to gainsay you? Not those at the apex. Of course you can continue channeling the wealth to the wealthy - what else should we do we it. Give it to the poor, who will drink it up, or go to the race tracks, or whore around town or take drugs and buy expensive cars and flashy clothes, all because they don't have the intelligence to know any better? 

That's just inopportune and not the way to create more wealth. How on earth will the poor create any way for that money to trickle-up? It's a fairy-tale...

Nanna

Here's a nifty letter that really will help the uninitiated "understand the financial crisis"...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1e4cfc6a-c74f-11de-bb6f-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

For the record: I don't think we want to abolish the SEC...yet....

As for lavishing the poor with tax monies...it's been happening for decades, with decidedly mixed results.  Here's a swell story from my own town.  Never mind that the article is from 1997; it could have been written last week.

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-16/news/mn-59369_1_sausalito-school-district

Originally written by John Bunch on November 5, 2009 6:36 PM the U.S. government positively "encouraged" (some would say: blackmailed) banks to loan to people with bad credit histories, or no credit histories, and then did not demand that banks have enough reserves to cover it,

John,

Polish special services revel in provocations and controlled purchases lately. Does that mean all businesses have to follow their game? Don't you have law enforcement agencies where you could report the U.S. government for blackmailing your bank into operations that are destructive for the whole world?

Jacek

Originally written by John Bunch on November 5, 2009 7:59 PM The government wanted the banks to issue debt to people with bad credit.

Then they shouldn't have done it.

The government wants you, for example, to go to war. You obviously won't, will you?

About healthcare and not only:

Nearly one out of every five dollars nationwide is spent on health care; it’s one of the few industries in America experiencing both employment and fiscal growth, and yet millions of Americans aren’t covered under any provision of the current system. ...

In the meantime, banks would like to continue paying their executives large amounts of money, thank you, except in the form of stock. ...

Perversely, many compensation experts have advocated for stock-based bonuses as a way to tie compensation to performance. Most did not seemingly consider a scenario in which stock performance was backstopped by billions of dollars of taxpayer money and guarantees. ...

As bank stocks crashed last year, firms issued their bonuses in the form of stocks and stock options. Once the government bailout of the banking industry was under way, stock prices rebounded, making the grants worth more, in some cases much more, than their original value. The Times has the story, along with the example of Goldman Sachs’ (GS) general counsel, who has watched his bonus’s value double to nearly $12 million in less than a year thanks to the rebound in the firm’s stock price.

http://www.thebigmoney.com/features/todays-business-press/2009/11/08/goldman-sachs-bonuses-doubled-due-bailout

* * *

Barclays’ (BCS) CEO, in defense of his industry, recently said, “profit is not satanic.” A Goldman Sachs International adviser seconded the thought, adding, “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all.” http://www.thebigmoney.com/features/todays-business-press/2009/11/07/profit-not-satanic-says-wealthy-banker?page=0,1

An interesting article on all too obvious analogies between East and West, or it's a small world: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/11/08/berlin_wall/index.html?source=newsletter

The aftermath of Wall Street's meltdown reminds me of the aftermath of the Berlin Wall's fall. Not in a good way

[...]

Operating at the pinnacle, members of both clans and institutional nomadic groups secure the resources and power necessary to further their group's goals, whatever they might be, often at the expense of the institutions they supposedly serve. It may seem absurd to suggest that American democracy today has anything in common with Russia or Poland in the early 1990s, or far-fetched to compare American businessmen and government officials with Russian clans and Polish nomads. But in the aftermath of the financial crisis in the United States, some things are starting to look familiar.

The post-communist players bear a striking resemblance to the interlocking handful of Wall Street–government policy deciders who "coincide" at the highest echelons of power and have come to be symbolized by "Government Sachs." From those who ruined Enron to those who wrought more recent Wall Street wreckage, a lack of loyalty to institutions, including the dearth of regard for shareholders and boards of directors, has characterized the modus operandi of the Wall Street players who brought on the financial crisis in America -- and the world.

In both the East European and U.S. cases, operators at the top challenge governments' rules of accountability and businesses' codes of competition, ultimately answering only to each other. In both cases, it's hard to get more "efficient," because inside information and power is confined to very few actors who trust each other. And, because only the players have the information, they can brand it for everyone else’s consumption without anyone being able to challenge them. Their maneuverings are largely beyond the reach of traditional monitors. Gone are the messy disagreements and competing interests of the democratic process. You can hardly get more efficient, for example, than having two former Goldman Sachs executives like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and assistant Neel Kashkari hand $700 billion in taxpayer money to errant financial firms, including a hefty chunk to Goldman Sachs.

Moreover, the intertwined coterie of financial and policy deciders in the United States is creating not only the financial architecture of the future, backed by the power and billions of the state, but, more generally, new relationships between the bureaucracy and the market. A perfect example of these relationships in Russia is Gazprom, the natural gas conglomerate created from the Soviet gas ministry in 1989 and staffed by nomenklatura turned capitalists. While it was nominally privatized in the 1990s, the Russian government holds a controlling stake and Gazprom is run by Putin cronies. Just as the Russian government holds a controlling stake in this major industry, bailouts have made the U.S. government a huge shareholder in two financial firms, AIG and Citi, as well as two carmakers, General Motors and Chrysler. Through their maneuverings, these networks help create new institutional forms of governance in which state and private power are not only interdependent but often blurred. With minimal public input or even notice, this new architecture provides more and more opportunities for the players to reinforce their power and wield influence -- largely beyond public scrutiny.

Though practically invisible to the public, the current challenge to democracy actually characterizes much of federal governance in the United States today.

[...]

Janine R. Wedel, a professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of "Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market"

Originally written by Jacek K. on August 21, 2009 10:08 AM Here is music to brokers' ears, a saw diagram: Up you win, down you win, up you win, down you win...

Hence the slang term

sawbuck

for the U.S. ten dollar paper currency. The slang is derived from the Roman numeral for ten, "X". The "X" looks like the shape of a sawbuck, a device used to hold wood in place for sawing it into pieces. (InvestorWords)

Heads a sawbuck, tails a sawbuck...