Guess Who's Selling Wall Street's Bull?

Thanks for another great investigative story Daniel! I know I would never have found time to discover that sleaze-ball Wilkinson's involvement in promoting the latest attempts by the well-rewarded bankster-class to keep our hard-earned taxpayer dollars, -- and those of our children, and grand-children and great-grand-children etc. -- flowing in to reward them for their global economy devastating misdeeds. It's certainly horrifying to see that they have turned to a "dirty-tricks" specialist like him; but, of course it's hardly surprising, since it's just what one would expect from such a completely amoral, even immoral, group of grifters.

Speaking about the financial crisis and continual governmental coddling of thugs and thieves, by the way, I find it very interesting that the only slogan that caught fire during the whole meltdown period was the completely ridiculous claim that the zombie-banks are "TOO BIG TO FAIL." [As if the 9,000 other U.S. banks couldn't pick up the slack, while we left the six big derivatives and CDO/CDS gambling giants sleep in the beds they had buttered themselves.]

"Too big to fail" ... hmm, wasn't the Roman Empire too big too fail? Wasn't Napoleon too big to fail? [Well his armed forces anyway!] Wasn't the British Empire too big to fail? Wasn't our own globe dominating Empire too big to fail, and as little as forty odd years ago? Wasn't even GM too big to fail? Oh, yes, and then we heard the same a few years ago, and again again quite recently, about Chrysler! And guess what, they all failed, and quite spectacularly as well!!

What I would like to know is why no one ever challenged such a stupid assumption as "too big to fail," a phrase that was somehow immediately "off the table" -- another such dangerous consideration stopper, -- and hence all consideration of "simply allowing the market to work," the way these same clowns have been telling, and forcing, other countires and the U.S. working class to do for decades, became suddenly unutterable, if not, indeed, unthinkable. We could only "bail them out," go completely "socialist" -- i.e, fully Stalinist -- by imposing restructuring, or face an immediate Apocalypse!! Certainly the sleepy-headed mainstream media just nodded its sorry head, and repeated mumbling "too big to fail" in a thousand different pathetically unimaginative op-ed pieces. [Which is why folks like YOU and journals like Mohter Jones are so damn important!!]

Is it not even more amazing that no one raised the really very obvious counter slogan, one that is actually quite TRUE, namely: "REWARDING CRIME GUARANTEES ITS REPETITION!" Good Lord, every parent or baby-sitter in the nation should know that much! And yet, not only did no one manage to speak such a palpably relevant truth, we even let the clowns at the Fed, Treasury and within the Obama administration, DO precisely that utterly STUPID thing!! And since our sorry excuse for a government has STILL done no serious investigations, not even audited, or even been allowed to LOOK at, the books of the worst offending banks, not even fired a single top CEO or CFO -- i.e. fraudmeister -- involved, nor punished the bought-off bond rating agencies for giving "AAA" ratings to what they knew damn well was at best "DDD" garbage, nor begun to look into restoring previous several good legal regulations implemented after similar scandals, as recently as Enron and WorldCom, and of course, after the very similar S&L fraud of the 80s, nor appointed any independent committees to look into whatever new regulations are clearly needed, nor appointed or empowered any agency to enforce whatever regulations are now or may soon be implemented, it is -- and I can't stress this too strongly-- nothing short of ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED that, just as soon as things quiet down a bit, WE WILL SEE YET ANOTHER SUCH DISASTROUS FINANCIAL BUBBLE AND CRASH, albeit probably in some slightly different, new, BUT equally opaque "asset product bundles." And these too will result in more huge fortunes, -- many even going to the very same crooks whom we have just rewarded. Much worse still, We are also GUARANTEED TO SEE some still deeper, perhaps even ultimately socially-fatal, DEPRESSION for the other 99,99% of all Americans, the ones, evidently who, while very numerous, are certainly NOT "too big to fail." Only NEXT TIME THERE WILL SIMPLY NOT BE ENOUGH MONEY, NOR FOREIGN HELP FROM OUR INCREASINGLY DISGUSTED CHINESE, JAPANESE, EUROPEAN AND ARAB BOND HOLDERS -- who will probably also have dropped the dollar as a reserve currency by then -- TO RIDE TO OUR TEMPORARY RESCUE!!

One can't hlp but wonder what might have happened instead if the obvious slogan "REWARDING CRIME GUARANTEES ITS REPETITION" had gotten itself established in the national psyche before the ridiculous "TOO BIG TO FAIL" had? Would we not then at least have seen SOME kind of firm action on the part of Obama and Co., rather than all this finger-twiddling waiting around, doing nothing and praying and hoping, quite unreasonably, that the problem might yet somehow magically disappear? But alas, who is that "sets the agenda" in world-historically important rhetorical matters such as these? Is it the reasonable folks, the parents and baby-sitters of America? Nope, it's the very very BIG folks, whose own failure, or indeed even the inability to turn one's own perfidy toward the whole world, into a windfall for oneself, is quite literally, unthinkable!!

Anyway, I apologize for straying so far from the immediate content of your fine story Daniel. But essentially we are both pursing the same basic story; the enormous power of slogans and propaganda to have at times CATASTROPHIC consequences when driven into the brains of the masses. That's why it's so important that you keep exposing Wilkinson's many half-truths and outright lies as he will soon be spreading them even more widely and insidiously!!

Keep up the GREAT WORK!! And that goes for all of you at Mother Jones!!

Best regards,
Bill Fusroy