Sorry I'm late on this folks, I'm just waking up on the left coast, a little work in Redondo Beach CA. But it is never too late to whine! What's on your mind, people? Falling behind in your home state's primary, you know, the state that sent you packing six years ago? Wondering if the big guy thinks you are VP material? Did you leave that $105M lottery ticket in the deep fat fryer at Micky D's? Tell us about it!
I ran across an issue of Rolling Stone the other day. I haven't even seen the rag for ages, although back in the day I read it all the time (I still remember the article on Dr. Paul Klipsch and the Klipschorn Speaker; brilliant stuff). Anyway, there was a piece by Matt Taibbi on Bank of America that I started reading and couldn't put down.
ReplyDeleteNow let me just say I am a capitalist, and I know who Matt Taibbi is. I know he's a left wing bomb throwing asswipe but he's also one of the few on the left who writes credibly about the foul incestuous relationship between Washington and Wall Street; a relationship that bears no resemblance to free enterprise capitalism but is in fact the very definition of fascism. And I know a little about B of A. I got my first post-Army car loan in 1976 from what was then Bank of North Carolina, and had my personal and business accounts there for decades (I moved everything about 4 years ago).
Since I first started doing business with Bank of NC, they through acquisition, merger and takeover morphed into NCNB, then NationsBank, and finally merging with San Francisco's Bank of America. And at every step they skirted or ignored anti-trust laws designed to prevent "too big to fail" mega-banks. They bought investment houses and mortgage outfits (like Countrywide), so presently they are the biggest and the baddest bunch of white-collar gangsters this side of Godfather III.
The article illustrates pretty clearly that some the moves B of A made cannot be explained in the context of a private corporation. Some of their acquisitions, some of their loans, the flagrantly illegal things they have done can only be explained as a collusion between regulators, corrupt politicians and tapped in money.
I urge you to read the article and to show it to your leftist friends. Taibbi, probably unknowingly, makes a great case for the Obama's administration's hypocrisy in dealing with the "1%" and demonstrates why this so called "crony capitalism" (i.e. fascism) must stop if we are to survive as a free people.