Huffington See's the US as a soon-to-be Third World Country

From a review by Janet Tavakoli of Ariana Huffington's new book Third World America: How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream:

Instead of apologizing for screwing up, the banks demanded the Great Bailout. At the start of the meltdown, the IMF and the U.S. administration estimated losses of $2 to $2.5 trillion. Unemployment and the losses are now shockingly worse. What was merely a recession escalated into the Great Recession.

How big are the actual losses? No one knows.

After destroying the value of major banks, banks used their enormous political influence—funded with taxpayer dollars—to get Congress to force the accounting board to change accounting rules (as of April 2009) so banks don’t have to recognize losses until they sell the assets.

According to William K Black, after the much tinier S&L crisis, there were over 1,000 successful felony prosecutions, several thousand successful enforcement actions, and roughly 1,000 successful civil actions.

This time Congress gave us the Great Cover-up. Bank officers dodged jail time and collected billions in bonuses. As one of my South American friends observes, he’s witnessed this third-world corruption before, and this time it’s in English.

Read the rest of the review. Looks like Huffington isn't holding back her punches. This book should be a has a winner.