Goldman’s Sacks 4
Robert Reich explains how Goldman Sach helped Greece the skids, while filling its sacks. A snippet:
Follow the link, where Reich explains the mechanics of the con worked.
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July 17, 2015 at 5:58 pm
This is what makes you give up. You can get a “name” like Robert Reich to write about it at The Nation and have it passed around to all the progressive websites and it just doesn’t matter. It could be on the front page of the NYT and it wouldn’t make that much difference.
Most people just don’t want to know. They don’t know what Goldman Sachs is and they especially don’t know the name Lloyd Blankfein. And to have known it would have taken an extraordinary effort by the President and the Democratic Party after the crash to take up the issue and tell the American people a story they could understand. And that effort was forfeited. In its place, the Tea Party and GOP dictated all the messaging. It was all about how socialism was taking over, and -that- was what had caused the world financial crisis, not Wall Street.
As you know, wrote a song, Let’s Lynch Lloyd Blankfein. Played it live in front of people. Nobody knew who the man was, ever. They still don’t.
I find a lot to agree with in the points Robert Reich continually hits upon. But it just has never made a difference; it’s just another career singing to the select audience, an audience that just has never been able to get many of the most important things done, except continually write and say that something ought to be done. So why continue to write about it? And there is the dilemma in doing it for nothing, the point of mental and moral crisis/collapse.
July 18, 2015 at 11:11 am
On some level, I can understand that persons who are just barely making it might not have the time to care about this stuff. Privation has a way of sucking away one’s ability to concentrate.
My particular peeve are those who have been lulled by the horse-race media into thinking that the Presidential election is the only one that matters. Second to that is the purists, the you don’t agree with me on everything, therefore both parties are the same and I’m voting for Nader crowd. They think they are so smart and sophisticated in their hubris.
July 18, 2015 at 5:06 pm
I don’t fall into that category. But my main objection is valid with regards to the issues surrounding predatory financialism and Goldman Sachs. There was a story, a truthful one, to be told in the wake of the collapse and a populace ready to hear it. And the Democrats and the president didn’t take that opening, ceding it to the right. Subsequently, there was an electoral disaster. No amount of trying to make this up on the left has the power of people who control a bully pulpit. To use a term from one of your colleagues, the Democratic Party is filled with tomato cans. One of the California reps I voted for in the past — he no longer represents me due to redistricting, is a tomato can. He’s the had of the minority party’s membership on the intelligence committee and he is a parrot for the national security infrastructure. There’s no compelling reason to vote for him, ever, except that the alternative is far worse. He never has any message worth hearing. Hillary Clinton is a tomato can, one driven by a certain mechanism that can always be counted on to find some angle to navigate between populism and the current status quo, an angle that is kind of a mimic’s insincere take on being for people. So instead of talking about raising pay for everyone, this week she goes on about creating “profit-sharing” between businesses and their employees.
At this juncture, why would anyone actually for the people in the Democratic Party come up with an idea like that, one that seeks some elaborate and still imaginary structure through which “American business” can share “profits” with its serfs? You know that’s just the worst kind of bull, something dreamed up to signal that as far as she’s concerned, Lloyd Blankfein, and corporate America are pretty much OK, just needing a little encouragement to be nicer to their people. As a message, it’s terrible. Worse, it’s not even simple to understand.
Anyway, back to Reich. It’s fairly obvious he has a big audience, with some reach, but it’s one of powerlessness. Jon Stewart can be viewed the same way. He made a fortune making comedy out of the right, often pointing out things the mainstream media just wouldn’t. But he also built his career on smacking the pinata of the obvious while rolling his eyes, emitting weird expressions and imprecations and making funny faces. He leaves having been responsible for no systemic change. Glenn Beck, on the other hand, created a great deal of change, and harm, before he was issued out of the Fox network. Alex Jones has created a force, one of lunatics, that has had an impact.
This is another way of saying that as the system is, there’s nothing more to write from the left side — in most cases. It’s repeating the obvious and that would have value but only if it had the same potential for making a difference that the repetition does from the right. In this country, it doesn’t.
July 21, 2015 at 10:40 am
Good heavens, I was not taking issue with your objections in any way; they are wholly valid.
I was voicing my own pet peeves about those who consider themselves “aware,” yet vote in a fantasy world.