Madoff's World

While some have tried to encourage us to blame poor people or one political party or another for our financial situation, it pays to spend some time reading articles about who might have profited from it or been instrumental in what went wrong. Remember that old saying-- follow the money!

If there are poor people who were ignorant about their ability to pay for a home, what about those who loaned them the money? How big a factor were the ones on the bottom rung? Did they bring down those on the top rung or is it what someone wants us to think? Who is still up there on the top rung? More information keeps coming out about what really happened:

How Bernie Did It

Madoff's London Money Laundering Scam

The following article is not online right now, but I heard it discussed on a radio program. It's in July's Rolling Stone and is well worth taking the time to read. It is Matt Taibbi's expose regarding the economic history of Goldman Sachs who has been at the heart of every bubble we have had since the Great Depression, has profited mightily from Ponzi schemes (the same kind of thing for which Madoff got 150 years in prison), has yet to suffer from regulations instead benefiting from them thanks to its powerful lobbying. Our new president appointed those who had either been in it or were friendly to it to his top economic positions. It was the one set of appointments that most worried me when he announced his choices.

Unfortunately the article is not currently online but this is a scan of it:

The Wall Street Bubble Mafia by Matt Taibbi

Recent issues of Vanity Fair have had some good articles to help a person better understand what had been going on in the rarefied levels of the financial world. The stories are on the human level, easy to understand. Fortunately for those who don't subscribe, these are online. One of the best was:

'Madoff's World' by Mark Seals

I think by now most people understand that Bernie Madoff pulled off a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme, but the article explained his background and more about the world in which he maneuvered, the people who were swindled (although that all is more complex than it first seemed as the investigators learn more).

Right now, the ones who have evidently engineered our current debacle seem to be continuing to profit from it. Madoff went to prison while Goldman Sachs is still out there bribing lobbying Congress people. When people joke that we have the best political system money can buy, it's not funny.

I know it's early in Obama's term, but we have to keep an eye on him. Do NOT trust anyone implicitly who is in political life. Watch what they do and make sure we aren't seeing a shell game with what we wanted being switched for something we didn't care about at all.

Also we cannot stop being informed because we are an elder. Even if we may not see this play out, our grandchildren and their children will be paying for it. If there is reincarnation, we might be coming back. It is important that we all do what we can to make sure it's a world into which we would want to return-- just in case.

It is good to read things from both sides. If I was a right winger reading only right wing propaganda, my view of the situation would be far different than if I was a left winger reading only left wing propaganda. By reading things that leave us a little uncomfortable, we at least know what is out there.

One of the things I condemned Republicans for was how they defended Bush and the right no matter what they did. He might be bad but he's our bad was how their thinking went.

If Obama does not continue to fight for the things he promised before the election [a public choice for health care, responsible economic policies, transparency in government, economic regulations that prevent more Ponzi schemes (and punish those engaging in them), closing Gitmo, stopping torture, investigating whether war crimes were committed and prosecuting if they were, and getting us out of our seemingly unending string of wars], Democrats need to speak up or we deserve what we get!

Right now I am feeling disillusioned with the direction, and glitz doesn't cut it for me. I still believe McCain would have been a disastrous choice, but that doesn't make Obama right! Bush would have been a better president if his party had held him more accountable.

Our chance for real change will come from us which is something I said all along. Americans want to think they can elect someone and then quit paying attention. It won't work that way. We need to be informed even when it's not fun, write our Congress people when they renege on commitments, and speak out. Then at least we have done our part to make it happen.

(Shadows are often considered to be our hidden side, the things we hide from ourselves and others. Certainly the roots of our economic travails could qualify very much as our country's shadow side. Some have grave concern that we are ruled by a shadow government, one we don't elect, but that no matter who we choose, they will be there running things.

This particular shadow is mine.)