What's the difference between crack dealers and Wall Street?
Here's my "Top Ten" list:
Ten. The "product" crack dealers sell is a lot less tainted.
Nine. Crack dealers don't take out life insurance policies on their victims, er . . . clients.
Eight. Crack dealers don't plough a share of their profits back into hiring lobbyists to re-write the nation's drug laws to suit their interests. Or donate millions to the campaign coffers of key members of Congress overseeing them.
Seven. Speaking of profits . . . Crack dealers don't get multi-million dollar bonuses.
Six. Crack dealers wreck blocks, and sometimes even whole neighborhoods. Wall Street has laid waste to an entire economy and jeopardized its currency -- not to mention savaging millions of homeowners, savers, investors, retirees, and small businesses.
Five. Crack dealers don't require bailouts adding trillions to the U.S. deficit.
Four. The police prosecute crack dealers.
Three. Crack dealers don't become senior advisers to the President, Federal Reserve, and U.S. Treasury.
Two. Crack dealers don't solicit business (usually) from retired teachers, firefighters, etc.
One (Tie). Wall Street's "supplier," The Federal Reserve, operates legally and in plain sight//Crack dealers aren't under the illusion that they're "doing God's work" (as Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was recently quoted as saying).
Speaking of Mr. Blankfein . . . consider this exchange yesterday between him and Phil Angelides, head of the Commission investigating the financial crash:
It sounds like you’re selling a car with faulty brakes and then buying an insurance policy on the car,” Mr. Angelides said. Mr. Blankfein emphatically responded that the investors buying these products were sophisticated and some of the biggest institutions in the world. Mr. Angelides [then] pointed out they represent the pension funds of teachers and firefighters.
--"Live-Blogging 4 Top Bankers on Capitol Hill"; The New York Times (1/13/2010)
Actually, I think the crack analogy is better.
How else do you explain the response of millions of Americans to Wall Street's offer of essentially free mortgage money, and the chance to cash in on the real estate boom?
Sure, you pity the crack addict for their sorry state . . . but you put the pusher behind bars.
Instead, we give Wall Street billions in bonuses, and their companies trillions in bailout money. More accurately, we give them trillions of our kids' money, that they'll have to re-pay.
Disgusting. Truly disgusting.
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