Greed

This is really turning out to be the winter of our discontent. Wall Street crashes and burns with mortgage-backed securities, hedge funds and exotic credit-default swaps (CDSs) that defy common sense. It’s all gambling with other people’s money behind smoke and mirrors. You’d probably do better in Vegas. Bernie Madoff made off with a lot of moola, not to mention Marc Dreier and other swindlers, under totally false pretenses. Then, there’s John Thain at Merrill Lynch and the other clowns at the banks and large corporations who continue to insult our intelligence by acting as though they are due their bonuses and inflated salaries while they embrace socialism to bail them out as they suck the rest us underwater. Just this past week, President Obama nailed these guys as “outrageous” and “shameful.” It’s a fine mess we’re in, and who really knows what it’s going to take to dig ourselves out. Whatever it is, it'll be on our backs. When will the Republicans figure out that private free enterprise is not free? The markets do not regulate themselves, and privatizing government is an oxymoron. Maureen Dowd got it right this morning when she urged that they all be disgorged.