What’s up with economic reform? Not enough.
At Alternet, you can read Art Levine’s detailed account of legal corruption of the economic “reform.” It’s not pretty, and the good guys are losing many of the important battles. Here’s a passage, but go read the whole thing–it’s well written and critically important:
So, the sleek, blond J.P Morgan lobbyist in a smart gray suit set off by a brightly colored scarf was able to saunter in shortly before the doors opened for the hearing to see just how many more loopholes could be added. (She declined to identify herself.)
Like the evicted family in Michael Moore’s new film being hired by the bank to clean out their own home, the banking-industry lobbyists in Washington have at long last created the ultimate trickle-down effect from the bailouts: hiring the jobless ( for $11 to $35 an hour) to hold their places in line to make sure there’s no effective federal crackdown preventing more job-destroying speculation in credit default swaps and other derivatives.
Robert Reich discusses what king of reform we were SUPPOSED to have by now:
What happened? Why haven’t we seen meaningful reform? America’s attention wandered to “balloon boy” and other idiocies, PLUS “Second, the banks keep paying off Congress.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-wall-street-reform-is_b_330105.html
From Robert Reich:
And now there are five — five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called”talent,” and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn’t know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. Now they do.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/breaking-up-the-big-banks_b_334814.html