Who Stands To Gain

[Conan71]

This is a worthwhile read, whether you are a librul or Repiglican.  Yes, I'm citing an article by Glenn Greenwald in salon.com.  This is one of the better common-sense non-partisan pieces I've read.  The debacle doesn't seem to be an impending collapse, the debacle is watching Washington try and protect their wealthy friends on Wall St. without pissing off their peon constituents.  Good luck with that!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/29/bailout/

"The people who run the Washington Establishment are drowning in conflicts of interest. Hank Paulson let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt while intervening to save AIG, only for it to be revealed after the fact that Goldman Sachs -- Paulson's career-long firm of which he was Chairman until just a couple years ago -- would have lost $20 billion had AIG failed. Worse, Goldman's current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, was present with Paulson when the decision to save AIG was made.

Beyond the litany of Wall St.-loyal government officials demanding this Wall St.-friendly bailout (Bush's Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, is also a former Goldman Sach official), Congressional leaders are, with very few exceptions, all vested heavily in Wall St. As but one example, Nancy Pelosi's tens of millions of dollars are invested (.pdf) in firms such as AIG, AT&T and others. It only stands to reason -- as always -- that if Wall St. is both owning the Government and running it, it will prevail over the proverbial "Main Street" every time. And it does, and just did again."

[FOTD]

Politico: "Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked. The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain's campaign's difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy." Bumbling and Lying Toward an Ignominious Defeat.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=AF9F10EC-18FE-70B2-A82949C5A24271A8