On the one hand:
Al Qaeda gave us a bloody nose on September 11, 2001. A few large buildings were destroyed, others damaged, about 3,000 people killed.
As a result, we have spent over a trillion dollars going after them, engaging in a war of aggression (against Iraq) and have added a whole plethora of security measures, most of which were eyewash to make people feel better.
On the other hand:
Wall Street and the banks knowingly engaged in bubbleizing the economy. Some of them sold off securities that they knew were fraudulent and then bet on the near dead-nuts certainty of those securities failing. The global economy almost collapsed in September of 2008. Millions of Americans and tens of millions of people around the world were thrown out of work. The uncertainty of continued employment, let alone losing one's job, has bad health effects and people are dying.Thousands of businesses failed, as did well over a hundred banks in this country alone. Millions of Americans are financially trapped in houses for which they cannot sell, as they owe more than their homes are worth. At least one entire nation is essentially bankrupt.
As a result, by pledging almost a trillion dollars, we propped up the banks and Wall Street. Nobody, other than Bernie Madoff, went to jail. The only firm that was dismantled was Lehman Brothers. No meaningful reforms have been enacted to make it so the grifters on Wall Street and the banks, including those greedy fucks at Goldman Sachs, cannot do it again. No meaningful help as been provided to anyone other than the big banks. Commercial credit is still largely unavailable, as the banks took the billions from TARP and did nothing with the money, other than pay out lots of bonuses to their top-level management.
Does any of this make any sense to anyone? We got so outraged when a bunch of Chitrali-hat wearing thugs wrecked the World Trade Center, but when a bunch of bespoke-suit wearing goons wrecked the economy, we have done essentially nothing.
The bind moggles.
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6 comments:
Al Qaeda == poor foreigners who can't buy any TV ads
Wall Street == the exact opposite.
That's the only difference I see.
Cujo, it's not "buy any TV ads", it is "buy any politicians."
Plus them thare Al Kay-dah fellers are, y'know, suspiciously DUSKY. They ain't fine upstandin' white fellers like you'n me, boy howdy.
- Badtux the Redneck Penguin
You'll love this . . . G Sachs takes the TARP money and buys oil and sticks it offshore on a hundred oil tankers . . . waiting . . waiting to bring it in and sell it high so they pay back the TARP plus interest. They do this of course why we pay higher prices at the pump. We lend them money, they party with it, and we pay it back at the pump. Get it? The business of big business is America.
Stupid terrorists just have to get jobs in health insurance companies. 45,000 dead Americans every year, with a healthy profit to show for it.
And a hundred million of your stupidest victims will all but stage a revolution to protect your right to murder them.
And here's the really funny part. The US government aided and abetted the growth of Saddam Hussein to combat Iran and the Taliban to combat the Soviets in the 1980s.
The US government deregulated the financial markets and stripped federal oversight from the banking industries.
Same enabler in both cases - Republicans.
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