- Ten Years After the Crash, We’ve Learned Nothing by Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone.
Taibbi, like most reform critics of our capitalist society, complains (sheds crocodile tears) about the effects of the 2008 economic collapse on the poor. Of course, this is true about all the periodic crashes of the capitalist economy.
... everyone in the upper echelon of the finance community got Paid In Full in the bailout, even the exact people who screwed up the worst. But outside Manhattan? It was like Warren Buffet’s partner Charlie Munger sneered: People should just “suck it in and cope.”
The biggest victims in this miserable story turned out to be poor, nonwhite, and elderly.
He also writes:
The deal those bankers cooked up was to save the banks from capitalism.
Losers must be allowed to lose. It’s the first and most important regulatory mechanism in a market economy.
But by 2008, the banks had simply grown too big and interconnected to allow normal market processes to take place.
Notice that Taibbi, like other reformist critics, limits his criticism and suggests that we need only to make improvements on capitalism. He apparently doesn't understand that the system was designed to serve a sociopathic few at the expense of the many, and this phenomenon that he complains about is inevitable. Such critics deflect any basic criticisms of the system which are now becoming obvious: the system itself is the problem.
- Aftermath Of Disasters Reveal A Hidden Truth This was a segment of last's night RT's Redacted Tonight program (carried on RT every Thursday evening and picked up on YouTube the next day--Fridays) that features comic Lee Camp and others. The "Hidden Truth"? Well, watch the segment and draw your own conclusions. (Tip: it has something to do with the behavior that's promoted under the system of capitalism.)
Actually, I advise people who need relief from viewing, reading, or listening to mainstream corporate sources and opinions to view this program. It is a powerful antidote to the corporate issued poison which can produce so many kinds of delusional behavior in otherwise normal adults.
