An op-ed by Frank Rich, The Other Plot to Destroy America, compares derivatives and the Zombie Banks to terrorism. It's right on too, pretty much the reason this site was founded. Economic Terrorism runs like stealth in the night for few understand what even happened.
What we don’t know will hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.
Rich goes on to describe the Pecora commission.
Rich makes some great points!
His leadoff statement about the clownish media (although he directs it at the populace at large) paying sole attention to this underwear bomber incident certainly is on target.
But then, if the media didn't concentrate on that and a bunch of other superfluous drivel, instead of of questioning why the Dorgan Amendment was voted down (Isn't breaking the pharmaceutical industry's price-fixing cartel a GOOD THING?), and what this health insurance legislation is really about, and....hey...what's up with the economy????
And those damning e-mails against Treasury Clown Geithner?
And all the variances within BLS reports? And the Fed officially buying back 80 percent of those Treasuries (and unofficially, perhaps, funneling those mysterious trillions they refuse to acknowledge to various central banks so they can purchase the remaining 20 percent of those Treasuries)?
Seems like most concerned Americans would wonder what ever became of all those toxic assets, and why do they keep churning out those infinite number of credit derivatives and credit default swaps?