financial oligarchy

“You just wonder, who is representing middle Americans?”

This is a very relevant question asked by Lynn Turner, a former accountant at the SEC. This question is in response to this story: Geithner Aides Reaped Millions Working for Banks, Hedge Funds

Some of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s closest aides, none of whom faced Senate confirmation, earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other Wall Street firms, according to financial disclosure forms.

Get that - they don't face Senate confirmation. Geithner's 'kitchen cabinet' comes right from the financial oligarchy:

He calls it Politics, I call it the Financial Oligarchy

Tyler Cowen writes an general op-ed on how Poliics now runs the financial sector in Where Politics Don’t Belong:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the birth of a military-industrial complex. Today we have a financial-regulatory complex, and it has meant a consolidation of power and privilege. We’ve created a class of politically protected “too big to fail” institutions, and the current proposals for regulatory reform further cement this notion. Even more worrying, with so many explicit and implicit financial guarantees, we are courting a bigger financial crisis the next time something major goes wrong.

I call this the financial oligarchy or multinational corporations took over Washington D.C.

Cowen also notes the lastest deals with big business have turned off many who are in favor of health care reform.

Treasury Dept. Changes Its Mission [UPDATED]

Its new mission:

To protect the financial oligarchy".

There is a quote that is so appropriate for what the Obama Administration particularly via the Treasury Department are doing:

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

--Albert Einstein

Check out the Obama Administration's last appointment to the Treasury Department. He's name is Jeffrey Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein has a HUGE potential conflict of interest:

Treasury Nominee Owes at Least $10.5 Million for Investments

That is right Mr. Goldstein, as partner of a private equity firm, owes millions of dollars to the firm he belongs to.

TARP Banks own 66% of all credit cards, 50% of all mortgages

Do you ever have one of those moments of pause and say to yourself, what have they done!

This was my reaction to a Washington Post article, Banks 'Too Big to Fail' Have Grown Even Bigger.

The worst actors of the financial crisis, those who should have gone down in the flames they set themselves, who were rescued by our government, are now beyond belief mega financial oligarchs, limiting consumer choice and making a mockery of the phrase moral hazard:

WaPo Author Cho:

Matt Taibbi shreds Goldman Sachs excuses

Matt Taibbi has been wading through the objections to his Rolling Stone article a few weeks ago detailing how Goldman Sachs has profited obscenely by using its political influence to help create, then prick, a series of financial bubbles over the past century. Taibbi's reply is very much worth reading, to see the depths to which defenders of the financial status quo will stoop, such as hurling the "anti-semitic" charge. But, here is the conclusion, which I consider the best part: