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I thought I was unshockable regarding the whole financial meltdown. I’ve read the books, watched the movies and truly lived the nightmare — but nothing prepared me for this article in the New York Times.  It describes an office Halloween party at one of the “foreclosure mills” used by the big banks, where staffers dressed up as homeless people, mocking those they were about to evict from their homes. Truly one of those gasping in horror moments. PLEASE read the article.

Why Wall Street (and the world) is being occupied

Then, we get the other side in a series of “postcards from the edge.” These are the 99 percent — young people with crushing student loan debt, families bankrupted by medical bills, the evicted, the unemployed — those occupying Wall Street.

These signs broke my heart

Watched Inside Job again, this time with my teenage kids.

The problem is so systemic that a whole army of Elizabeth Warrens can’t provide a counterweight. It’s the out-of-control derivatives market where anyone can “insure” something they don’t own, unlimited times. It’s the rating agencies, or should I say, the “opinion” agencies, wh0 are paid by the companies whose products they are evaluating. It’s the cash leverages of 30-1, requiring no house money to be put up for risky bets. It’s the corporate compensation that is untethered from corporate performance.

Foxes guarding the hen house

RUBIN, PAULSON, SUMMERS

It’s the fact that as Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Rick Rubin pushed for a change in Glass-Steagal, then immediately went to work for Citigroup implenting the law he got changed — and made $135 million.

Its the fact that Hank Paulson, possibly the biggest SOB of them all, was given the keys to the kingdom when Bush et al rammed the banking bill through Congress on a weekend.

It’s the fact that Larry Summers, the next biggest SOB, went on to become Obama’s chief economic advisor, and that Tim Geithner, who vehemently opposed Elizabeth Warren’s appointment, is still Treasury Secretary.

WHERE IS OBAMA?

Obama’s a brilliant guy, but he’s a conciliator and gives too much. C’mon, Ken Salazar at Interior who wasn’t fired after the incompetence of the MMA regulatory failure of BP was revealed? I hope I’m wrong, but if the systemic culture of corruption and cronyism doesn’t change the same disastrous mistakes will be repeated.

People forget that the top tax rate during the 1950s was 91 percent

Howard Stern (of all people) had a terrific insight. He was on Jon Stewart and said, “you’re like a voice of reason.” Indeed. Especially regarding a segment Jon did this past week comparing the Fox News coverage of the millionaire tax cuts vs. the greed of the unionized teachers. It’s shocking how manipulated Fox’s viewers are by the powerful elite that controls the broadcast. Sad. VERY sad. Anyway, Jon Stewart observed that their intention is to create class warfare — with the middle class pitted against each other.

It’s all summed up in this joke:

A Wall Street CEO, a tea party member, and a union worker are all sitting at a table when a plate with a dozen cookies arrives. Before anyone else can make a move, the Wall Streeter reaches out to rake in 11 of the cookies. When the other two look at him in surprise, the CEO locks eyes with the tea party member. “You better watch him,” the executive says with a nod toward the union worker. “He wants a piece of your cookie.”

The reason why the government needs to impose strict regulations on business is because corporations are inherently amoral. Not immoral, as in lacking in morals or evil. But amoral, as in ethically neutral. The job of the corporation is to earn money for its shareholders. If it has an enlightened agenda, like offering part-time workers benefits, that is not because it is benevolent, but because such largess allows it to attract better talent, make superior goods and create bigger profits for shareholders.

The originator of this idea about corporations being amoral was Milton Friedman, founder of the famed Chicago School of economic thought. They believed in laissez-faire capitalism, but ironically created a body of thought that justified strong federal oversight.

Accidents can be prevented

Yes, if it is profitable for a corporation to do so, it will dispose of chemicals in the river, hire child workers overseas or cut corners on the safety backup system of a deepsea oil rig.

We recently interviewed a nurse from the Burn Unit of a Los Angeles area hospital for my magazine Working Nurse. The article was about her career path, but she said something that caught my attention regarding the concept of corporation regulation. She was discussing the full-body burns that require a nurse to spend three or four hours a day debriding, which is removing dead tissue, and changing dressings — and mentioned why it’s becoming rare to see these patients.

“Fortunately, burns of this magnitude are decreasing, thanks to smoke detectors, prevention programs and OSHA safety standards in the workplace,” she said.

It’s one of those depressing stories over at Kos today shows in a microcosm exactly what is wrong with our value structure in this country.

The story is how scientists doing cutting-edge research in particle physics are abandoning the effort because they cannot find the $35 million to keep their telescope operating. By contrast, this is where the money is spent:

In the first three months of this fiscal year, the war in Afghanistan alone cost $4.3 billion a month. Which comes out to nearly $139 million a day. Which comes out to over $5.75 million an hour. Which means we’ve been spending more on the war in Afghanistan just over every six hours than is needed to continue searching for the most coveted particle in high-energy physics. For a year. Does this sound like a nation looking toward the future, or a nation in decline?

Scene from the October Working World Job Fair in Los Angeles. Yes, companies are hiring!

The Jobs Report is out and numbers look good: businesses hired 159,000 people in October. This represents four straight months of job growth at over 100,000 per month. According to ABC News, this is the first time in more than four years this has happened.

The best part of the news is that there is an increase in temp hiring, which is a bellweather to economic recovery. Companies test the waters with temporary workers before committing to full-time employees.

The only bad part of the report is that it came out after election day. PLEASE politicians, what we are doing is finally working. Now it’s only a matter of time and we MUST stay the course. Do not let Boehner and his reactionaries succeed, whose only agenda item is overthrowing Obama.

Let’s do what’s right for the country, not what’s needed to stroke the egos of the Republican elephants like Rove and Limbaugh.

This brilliant piece of writing from Joe Klein over at Time.com.

Sean Hannity called the spill “Obama’s Katrina,” but it was actually George W. Bush’s second Katrina. Vice President Dick Cheney, fresh from his days at Halliburton, had presided over the weakening of drilling regulations, including the exclusion of remote-shut-off switches (commonly used in the North Sea oil fields), which might have prevented the disaster.

The Bush Administration’s petro-bias and antigovernment sensibility soiled the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency charged with regulating offshore drilling. Indeed, the MMS soon emerged as a caricature of bureaucratic lassitude and corruption. A 2008 report found that the agency’s regulators were taking gifts from, and having sex with the employees of, the companies they were supposed to be monitoring.

Another report, about MMS activities from 2005 to 2007, will show, among many other things, that MMS staffers allowed oil companies to fill out their own inspection reports in pencil, which were then committed to ink by stenographic MMS regulators. Other studies found that the MMS was remarkably, perhaps criminally, lax in collecting the royalties due the government for the right to extract oil from public lands, nor was it fulfilling its rig-inspection responsibilities. The encyclopedic catalog of the agency’s sleaziness boggles the mind.

They have 131,427 followers

Faced with a travesty of these proportions, the best volley back is always a satirical Twitter page. Behold, the power of 140 characters. Sample posts from @BPGlobal_PR:

Safety is our primary concern. Well, profits, then safety. Oh, no- profits, image, then safety, but still- it’s right up there.

Words can not express how sorry we are. So we are going to stop apologizing and just give our investors 10 billion dollars. 

Tough enough to take on Wall Street?

Elizabeth Warren, Harvard economics professor and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, is a leading advocate for accountability and transparency. As such, she advocates creation of new consumer financial protection agency, which of course is getting resistance from the Republicans. Here’s what she said:

My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.

Here’s Ms. Warren’s op-ed from Politico entitled “Banking on Hypocrisy.”

Go Liz!

Interesting interview in the NY Times magazine on Sunday with Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos in which he says the SEC is a “bunch of idiots” and the agency is “poisoned by lawyers.”

The five commissioners of the S.E.C. are securities lawyers. Securities lawyers never understand finance. They don’t have the math background. If you can’t do math and if you can’t take apart the investment products of the 21st century backward and forward and put them together in your sleep, you’ll never find the frauds on Wall Street.

The good news is that Markopolous thinks Robert Khuzami, the new head of the enforcement division, has “got fire in his belly.”

I cannot overstate how distraught I am about the SCOTUS ruling that corporate money = speech. This is going to change the country forever. McDonald’s doesn’t like the FDA restrictions on the safe handling of beef, sponsor their own candidate! Cigna wants pre-existing conditions, sponsor their own candidate! Exxon wants to squash mass transit, sponsor their own candidate! Corporations are constructed entities, not human beings. Why should they have 1st Amendment protections?

Goodbye democracy, hello plutocracy. And now with Scott Brown, is healthcare reform officially dead or just on life support?  It’s starting to feel like we never had an election, that we’re stuck in the Bush years forever — consider, we have 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan, the banks are making record profits, healthcare reform is unlikely to pass, Guantanomo is still open, and now this SCOTUS radical ruling on corporate money. Sigh…