Fake money

I just found some notes I started in December 2007.  It's about what's going on now.  I was so right!

Anyway, tonight, I'm listening to NPR.  Middle aged white folks discuss how this "bank collapse" thing can get a lot worse.  Entire markets, industries, economies are now in jeopardy.  AIG?  I can't help but wonder... weren't they paying attention?

I know it started earlier, but it seems like fake money has ruled since the late-90's.  I was in college then had some friends with promising dot com jobs that laid 'em off.  I remember reloading the Indymedia website from my work-study office, thrilled to see a reasonably solid (if small) victory in Seattle.  Months later,  I read about rolling blackouts in California.

Resistance seemed to grow.  The new IT industry of the 90s burst.  It got pretty stupid.  A real conversation had coalesced on the left, while the US president appeared paralyzed in its headlights.  Then, explosions, shock,  fear.   Couple weeks later, Enron.

Recall Enron.  Fake accounting, made up companies, made up numbers, crazy profits, and ended with lots of ordinary people taking the biggest hits.  People lost jobs and retirement plans collapsed but the bankers mostly kept theirs.  Generally, the execs found work.

J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse First Boston, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Bank America, Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Lehman Brothers... key players in a series of fraudulent transactions that ultimately cost shareholders more than $25 billion. At the same time, a number of top bank executives profited personally from the schemes, according to the complaint."  Press release.

War. Fear.  Struggle.  The Ownership Society.

In the following years, the Banks sold mortgages to communities without the requisite investment in education and jobs. It's that easy.  Yes, they were the same banks from Enron and IT.  The crooks went out of their way to "lend" way more money than any community could pay for.  It might also be called "laundering."

So now the "bubble" appears to be getting laundered again, after retirement savings have diminished and thousands of jobs are threatened, but not before the execs all got theirs.  More fake money disappears,  left most burdensome on the working class who actually earned it.  (or middle class, whatever).

It keeps happening.  Is that sane?