Anger: Markets and the Reverse Galt Reality

Watching Jon Stewart eviscerate Cramer, MSNBC and Financial Reporting was a cathartic experience.  All the more so with the rash of movement conservatives and talking heads putting Ayn Rand on a pedestal and contemplating the virtues of Going Galt.  Because the idea being “Going Galt” is that it is the CEO’s who are the wealth producers in this country.  Stewart’s finely edged attack makes precisely the opposite point.  Average Americans are the ones financing the greedy, wildly speculative and dangerous games the wealthy play with our entire economic system:

there exist “two markets”…the long-term investments of ordinary people and the short-term speculative trades of Wall Street. As Stewart tells Cramer, the former is underwriting the excesses of the latter

Which is why “Going Galt” is such a reprehensible game of Bush-Rove style political punditry.  They’ve bult the foundation of their arguments out of the precise opposite of the truth and stuck by it without the slightest hint of irony.  Meanwhile the companies who tripped over their own greed with our retirements and investments down the tube are using our tax dollars, meant to stimulate the economy, to give their “best and brightest” millions in dollars in bonuses.  The people who trashed our economy while making millions for themselves ought to be fined for every damnable cent they made at our expense!  If there is no responsibility, if there are no consequences for the fraud and stupidity that have nearly destroyed our country’s fiscal health, then what is stopping anyone from commiting these crimes again if we recover from the current crises?

This is why so many people are furious.  The economic vandals are getting away with their crimes (or being rewarded for them) while ordinary people shoulder both the blame and the cost, and our media establishment only forsakes the role of cheerleader for journalist when its become fashionable rather than useful.