Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned

Milton Freidman

Politics for Wednesday

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter.  From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.

Daniel Webster

In the Financial Times, Robert Reich has a piece stressing why Obama must take action to control Wall Street.

What happened to all the tough talk from Congress and the White House early last year? Why is the financial reform agenda so small, and so late?

Part of the answer is that the American public has moved on. A major tenet of US politics is that if politicians wait long enough, public attention wanders. With the financial crisis appearing to be over, the public is more concerned about jobs. Another 85,000 jobs were lost in December, bringing total losses since the recession began in December 2007 to over 7m. One out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed.

And the current legislation…

The bill that has already emerged from the House is hardly encouraging. Dubbed the “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act”, it effectively guarantees future Wall Street bail-outs. The bill authorizes Fed banks to provide up to $4,000bn in emergency funding the next time the Street crashes. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into financial markets last year. The bill also enables the government, in a banking crisis, to back financial firms’ debts. 

But the widening gulf between Wall Street and Main Street – a big bail-out for the former, unemployment checks for the latter; high profits and giant bonuses for the former, job and wage losses for the latter; buoyant expectations of the former, deep anxiety and cynicism by the latter; ever fancier estates for denizens of the former; mortgage foreclosures for the rest – is dangerous.

www.ft.com

If the general public actually understood what was going on, they’d be mad as hell.  But if they are complacent, it will be too late before they wake up and wonder what happened. 

This clip from Network is a classic.  Fitting on the first day of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission public meetings.

It’s amazing how little has changed in 30 years since Network was released.  For those not familiar with the movie, you can catch up Here 

The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism," they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." .... "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform.

Norman Thomas, Whether Norman Thomas actually said this is in doubt.  See www.snopes.com

There are two things in the universe that are truly abundant: Hydrogen and Stupidity.

Frank Zappa

Is there anything that make’s you mad as hell today?