I’m not sure if The Big Takeover by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone has been linked to or mentioned hereabouts.
The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street
insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution

…
People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — “our partners in the government,” as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.
The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits…

Posted by: Hamburger | Mar 27 2009 15:43 utc | 3

1-in-3 odds on worse, much worse, here’s how:
(1) America’s financial imbalance gets fixed abruptly and mostly by expenditure reduction, lack of savings prevents comfy Japan-style stagnation, and path dependence disrupts trade patterns just long enough to shut down industries worldwide.
(2) America dodged the fascist bullet in the thirties but this time our luck runs out as bankers respond to reform efforts by throwing their weight to the right.
Time for us to start thinking like the third-world elites that we’ve become, and brush up on our skills: capital flight, tax evasion, bribery, and emigration.

Posted by: …—… | Mar 27 2009 16:27 utc | 5

o 6) yeah, that chart looks more like the percentage of Defense spending as a ratio of
all other discretionary spending, at 66% (200% of health and human resources spending)
and will continue to climb, even as the H&HR spending is eclipsed by deficit interest,
until US has a defacto Fascist State, whether you want to call it that, or “Change”,
“Hope for Change”, or “Hope I Changed My Drawers”, when the Great Liquidation begins.
Everyone I know is either building a bunker in the outlands, or planning to emigrate,
although the majority of them realize they’ll never achieve those goals, and are now
working into their retirement in dribs and drabs, holding off nursing home vampires.
You can’t really understand fascism until the American Pflegeheim Lager captures you.
A whole lifetime of arbeit macht frei, to end up as a drug-interaction lab rat.

Posted by: Elliot Ness | Mar 27 2009 17:49 utc | 7

What’s the point of that graphic? I don’t understand – the baseline is useless without a comparison. What about the pay-per worker for IT workers? Auto? Airline pilots? Civil engineers?
His implication is clear: bankers made more and they didn’t deserve it.

Posted by: Jeremiah | Mar 27 2009 18:12 utc | 9

b
short answer
yes

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 27 2009 18:47 utc | 11

Barack Obush, the Democrooks and the Repugnicans are waging
naked all out class warfare against the American people.
This country is being systematically looted and it will
continue until there is nothing left.
I watched Bill Moyers’ interview with Johnson and he was
talking about “malefactors of great wealth” holding the
global economy hostage in order to get what they want, which
is trillions of dollars of taxpayer money in order to keep
and increase their wealth.
Nothing short of a violent revolution will stop this and you
can be sure that is what the global financial elite are
preparing for.

Posted by: ecoli | Mar 27 2009 20:18 utc | 13

The French Revolution happened because the privileged classes that enjoyed tax and other immunities were unwilling to give up those privileges, even when the monarchy was facing fiscal collapse.

Posted by: lysias | Mar 27 2009 23:08 utc | 15

Can the economy keep going held together with duct tape, baling wire, and chewing gum? Nope. It’s all down to when and how it falls apart. No doubt that we (and our childen’s children) are being looted by people who already have obscene amounts of money and power. As harsh as it sounds, a collaps sooner rather than later would be better in the long run for the vast majority.

Posted by: pk | Mar 29 2009 19:06 utc | 17

China_hand2-
The elites aren’t freaking out about terrorism, they’re trying to keep the population freaked out about the smalltime terrorist, so we’ll ignore the big terrorist (mutinational corps and their flunkies).
Kill one man, you’re a murderer. Kill many, and you’re a conqueror. Kill them all and you’re a god (and lonely).
But the world war you picture is awful scary, though I think the EU would be divided and split between those factions rather than remain a cohesive group of nations.

Posted by: d.13 | Mar 30 2009 14:32 utc | 19