Sunday papers

Frank Rich, back from vacation, reminds us that our economy did not fall, it was pushed (and many people who were not speculators but merely trying to live their lives indoors were pushed with it):

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.

He also points out that Warren Buffett warned us in 2003.

Mr Buffett argues that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs and "financial weapons of mass destruction" that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the whole economic system.

So, you know, f*ck that noise about how nobody coulda predicted this, too.

Next week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission begins public hearings. Rich again:

The new inquiry does have subpoena power, but its entire budget, a mere $8 million, doesn’t even match the lobbying expenditures for just three banks (Citi, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America) in the first nine months of 2009. The firms under scrutiny can pay for as many lawyers as they need to stall between now and Dec. 15, deadline day for the commission’s report.

And for the first time I am seeing the health reform bill as a deliberate distraction from the real issue. Although decimated, the bill remains a perfect misdirection tool because compared to the derivatives market it is actually remarkably simple; because the stupid end of the news media can still cast it as a horserace; and because the progressives and economists who could be paying attention to the broader financial crisis can be distracted by it. I am grateful to Rich for pointing out that we've got to pay attention to both, and more.

So the thing that is becoming interesting for me is that in many places, it's getting hard to avoid that if we are lucky, we will look back on these battles as the beginning of the war against the ongoing corporate takeover of government. It's like, we must fight Sauron, but we still need to get that ring melted.