Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Lehman Fraudulently Cooked Its Books, Accounting Giant Ernst & Young Helped, Geithner and Bernanke Winked and Slapped Them on the Back

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

Friday, March 12, 2010

Lehman Fraudulently Cooked Its Books, Accounting Giant Ernst & Young Helped, Geithner and Bernanke Winked and Slapped Them on the Back

from Washington's Blog.

All the dirt on the key players in the economic collapse (for working people) that you probably don't need to know, but might be curious about anyway. I think the key point that very astute observers like the author of this blog and Yves Smith miss is that, to paraphrase a famous statement of one of our ~~great~~ presidents, Bill Clinton, "It's the economic SYSTEM, stupid!"

The economic collapse is, IMO, not about personalities even though the destruction is carried out by individuals of, or serving, the governing class of owners. It's the built-in incentives of capitalism that shapes the behavior of individuals who otherwise might have turned out to be decent folks.