Thank you, fatster, for your wonderful and amazing ‘Roundups’!
Your link to Roubini provides a perspective which is most-interesting and very informative.
I note, however that, though Roubini mentions the “immoral” conflicts of interest inherent in the vast “collection” of “both-sides” banking activity, he did not mention (or, if he did, I missed it) the ability of the banks to buy the government … indeed, some members of Congress have said, publicly, that the Banks “own” Congress … giving rise to the very serious question of the government’s essential legitimacy … of that government’s willingness and capacity to afford the civil protections which a legitimate government MUST provide its citizens, all of them, unless a multi-tiered society, in terms of “benefits” and sanctions, of elites and “untouchables” is, now, to be accepted as “legitimate”.
If a government refuses to abide by the Rule of Law, not merely in terms of economics but, also, in “other areas”, as well, then, by most reasonable and rational measures, such a government is severely “compromised” and may be understood to serve ONLY the interests of those who control it.
If this government does not, soon, demonstrate the capacity AND willingness to bring malefactors to account, then that government is not only failed … it is a tyranny built wholly upon treasonous acts and the intentional destruction of viable civil society.
If that government, then, engages in suppressing the right of seeking, by the people, of redress of actual and substantiated grievance, then that government becomes a threat to ALL of humanity …
In fact, if such a government asserts that it may kill anyone, anytime, and any where which suits the whims of those who control that government, then that government is deliberately undermining all law, international as well as domestic, and thereby creating a new paradigm of terror and oppression. One that will be emulated.
Despite what some may argue, the behavior of our government in NOT merely a domestic “issue”, the “problem” of its citizens, alone, but rather such behavior affects everyone around the world, to greater or lesser degree, both in terms of the global economic system as well as any means by which the community of nations may protect the peace and well-being of peoples and their societies.
DW
