Let Wall Street Die

Let the once mighty businesses of Wall Street die. Let their deaths be merciless. No taxpayer bailout for the big financial investment and insurance companies facing insolvency.

Not one penny of your money or my money should go to rescue the growing cesspool of filthy-rich, elite financial managers whose unchecked greed and false sense of entitlement has given this country its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

As we let Wall Street die, let this truth be heard as well: This financial crisis is a failure of unwise and immoral ideology. The free market is not a panacea. It does not work without rules and oversight. Without regulation, it will always fail as a socioeconomic system. Some aspects of our culture, such as health care and retirement, should be completely off-limits to the free market system.

As we let Wall Street die, let us create programs to protect people’s retirement income. Let us, by all means, help people keep their homes if it is feasible. Let us create new job programs as we rebuild our country’s infrastructure. Let us employ more teachers and health care workers. Let us expand job opportunities for people who want to work in the growing alternative-energy sector. Let us refocus and become rational.

And if we have to suffer in order to correct the broken American political system, then so be it. Let Wall Street fall, and there will be a tremendous, immediate correction. Let it live and assume another life, a government hybrid that rewards the rich with taxpayer money, and the anguish will be drawn out, tortuous.

Wall Street will not die, of course, because our political system is intricately tied to it through campaign contributions and lobbyists and elite Ivy League college business schools, which provide its keepers. The Wall Street charlatans own the American political system. For the most part, the greed mongers tell our leaders what to do and how to do it and when to do it. We have seen it for days now as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presents his I-love-investment-bankers plan to a majority of complacent, enabling rich politicians. Ignore the empty saber-rattling rhetoric by a handful of politicians suddenly trying to sing a populist tune. It is all just theater. The fix is in. Our tax dollars are going to go to pay the exorbitant salaries of rich people, to Harvard and Yale MBAs who want to steal your grandmother’s retirement money.

Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, pushing the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout (it could be more, much more) for mismanaged and corrupt Wall Street companies, say we need to act now. So watch our weak-willed leaders fall all over themselves this week to do George Bush’s last bit of dirty work for the rich. It is because emperor Bush has decreed it so, and we all must act. There is no time for debate, for reflection. We must save the rich people from themselves, from their own hubris and greed, and we must do it now. It simply does not matter, at this point, that Bush has the lowest approval ratings of any president in modern history.

Wall Street got into this mess because it pushed subprime mortgages and then created various financial ruses to make sure they got every dime they could get from their pyramid scheme. The Bush administration went along with it every step of the way. It should have been illegal, and in the future it will be. But here is the rub: Even if we let Wall Street die, thousands of investment bankers have already robbed the system of billions of dollars. They are still rich, filthy rich, with property and investments across the spectrum. You may not have a retirement income or health insurance and you may lose your job, but Bush, Paulson and Bernanke are going to make sure investment bankers still have their wealth and full employment, too.

Does it make logical sense to follow any program sanctioned by Bush? The rescue plan was concocted by the very people—loyal Bushbots and GOP ideologues—who allowed the financial system to get so out of control in the first place. Why should we trust them now?

Has there ever been a better carpe diem moment for change?