Wednesday, October 07, 2009

One Year After The Almost-Fall of Wall St.

For the seven of you reading this blog, you might recall about this time last year I issued a rant about the evils of unregulated capitalism and greed that nearly destroyed our nation's (and our planet's) economy.

It does not please me to note that one year later nothing much has changed.

Many of the players - the financial institutions, the ratings agencies, the captains of banking - are still where they are, unpunished and unrepentant. Any criminal investigations that might be ongoing are off-the-radar if they are happening at all.

Meanwhile, unemployment is at 10 percent, the highest since the 1981-82 recession, threatening to reach Depression-era levels. And that's the OFFICIAL number: the unofficial numbers really are at Depression-era levels and getting worse. So while the upper echelons of our economy had been stabilized by Obama's stimulus package earlier this year, NOTHING HAS HAPPENED TO HELP THOSE OF US (pretty much the 99.95 percent that AREN'T billionaires) WHO REALLY NEED THAT HELP.

With regards to what Obama is doing, to what he CAN do, to what Congress should do... That will be for another post as soon as I can get some thoughts straightened out about that.

Interesting to note that the unemployment numbers would be a huge weapon against the Democrats right about now, but the Republicans are in no position to use it (I've heard a few GOP politicians bring it up, but outside of that, almost nothing on the Intertubes or FOX Not-News of note). Also reason for that other post...

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