So, "Who stole the people's money?"

[kpete]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jan/09/financial-crisis-why-no-executive-prosecutions/?pagination=false

http://toomuchonline.org/weeklies2013/dec092013.html

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Many folks are not aware today's problems are so very very old.

Countries have been fighting the mega-rich for centuries.

guess the battle is not goint to well, when viewed in the span of time.

[hfojvt]

2. is 1.5% of the nation's personal net worth

really "the people's money"?

Or is it a very tiny percentage (you know, less than 2%, less than 1/50th, something like that) of "the people's money".

Also, isn't it a mistake to focus so much on "personal net worth".

Galbraith's book (from 1955 or so) called "The Affluent Society" made the argument that personal fortunes were growing but public investment was not keeping up.

But when you think of "the wealth of nations" as I look at the U.S. there are vast amounts of "public wealth" that really kinda dwarf all of that "personal net worth". Here's a listing of some of them

1. highways
2. streets
3. water departments (municipally owned)
4. public schools
5. public universities
6. national parks and monuments
7. state parks
8. city parks
9. public swimming pools

Okay, I may be biased there since I work in the Parks department and was on the water board. But really probably one of the top ten richest people in this city of 35,000 is, if a corporation was a person - the publicly owned water deparment. They have $30,000,000 in assets as well as over $10,000,000 in cash. The city, county and schools have considerable assets as well, although the school has some debt too. The city (meaning the citizens of the city) owns two pools - an indoor as well as an outdoor pool. I have less knowledge about finances of the city, school, and county.

[davidhume2000]

3. It's not the "government" it's the politicians

Great article and very informative but Rakoff says, "what I am suggesting is that the government was deeply involved, from beginning to end, in helping create the conditions that could lead to such fraud."

The problem with this is that the government is not a monolith, and there were massive, corrupt, partisan political influences that resulted in the errors he is referring to. In short, the three decades of Grover Norquist economics, propagated by the corporate bosses under the guise of economic libertarianism, is what, "helped create the conditions."

There were plenty of people in congress who did not support deregulation, and if they were aware of the risk, would have supported better funding of oversight - they were still part of the "government."

Rakoff makes the Tea Party mistake of decrying the "government" because there is so much corruption, inefficiency, and dysfunction, but that is not a justified indictment of "government," but an indictment of the proliferation of corrupt, complicit politicians.

In the same way Rakoff argues that we must prosecute the executives not the corporations, the finger needs to be pointed at politicians not the "government."

Still an important read, however.

[TBF]

4. Eisenhower warned us

about the military industrial complex. That was just the beginning. Reagan was the one who decided to cut capital gains tax (and then everyone after him continued it - both parties). When just a few families are allowed to control most of the nation's wealth you have a bad situation. And it's getting worse.