Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Neil Barofsky Tells Jon Stewart How the Ego and Narcissism of Washington Preserve a Broken Status Quo

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Neil Barofsky Tells Jon Stewart How the Ego and Narcissism of Washington Preserve a Broken Status Quo

Click here to access the two video segments featuring an interview with Neil Barofsky on John Stewart's The Daily Show posted on Naked Capitalism.

Barofsky was the US Treasury inspector appointed to oversee the TARP program used to bail out banks. He served from late 2008 until his resignation in March 2011.

In the interview he describes the "alien world" (to us ordinary people of the 99 Percent) of government operations in Washington DC. At one point Stewart refers to government officials as "delusional" and such activities as reported by Barofsky as merely a part of a "Washington culture". While the comments in the interview were funny, I think they only served to head off the proper, and more dangerous, notion that the government is controlled by people who have interests which are incompatible with the great majority. This epiphany would lead to more subversive and seditious thoughts which liberals, who serve a useful function (for the One Percent ruling class) of preventing us from going there.

I mean--think about it--the implications from what Barofsky reported about his experience clearly leads to the conclusion that we have a government that pretends to serve society in general, but in reality only serves a small elite who are well connected with major banking institutions. Consider only these two facts brought out in the interview:

Nothing changed from George Bush Jr to the Barak Obama administration.
Barofsky in his role of inspector was thwarted in every way from going after the major bank executives.

Clearly this suggests that there exists a shadow government in Washington controlled by the financial elites. Thus, they were not delusional, they were only acting in their own interests regardless of the disasters created throughout the economy of the US and many parts of the world.