Hot Off the Press! Come and Get It!

You can see the pdf version of the full

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY REPORT: FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON THE CAUSES OF THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS IN THE UNITED STATES

at this government web site.

My favourite bit starts at page 389: "The Economic Fallout"

Never has it been clearer how poor business judgments we have made have affected Main Street.” Indeed, Main Street felt the tremors as the upheaval in the financial system rumbled through the U.S. economy. Seventeen trillion dollars in household wealth evaporated within 21 months, and reported unemployment hit 10.1% at its peak in October 2009.

This is the gift of George Bush and his Republican mantra of "government is your enemy" and "deregulate, deregulate, deregulate". And the most amazing thing? Nobody has gone to jail for destroying $17 TRILLION... you can be sent up the slammer for life for stealing $100 if you are from the bottom layers of society. But if you are Wall Street banker and destroy millions of lives, you get to keep you 2008 multi-million dollar bonus, and... you get an even bigger bonus in 2099... and an even bigger bonus in 2010! Life is sweet!

Oh... and while everybody loves to talk about "the heroes" who went off to fight the wars, something strange happened back home. From a NY Times article:

While Sgt. James B. Hurley was away at war, he lost a heartbreaking battle at home.

In violation of a law intended to protect active military personnel from creditors, agents of Deutsche Bank foreclosed on his small Michigan house, forcing Sergeant Hurley’s wife, Brandie, and her two young children to move out and find shelter elsewhere.

When the sergeant returned in December 2005, he drove past the densely wooded riverfront property outside Hartford, Mich. The peaceful little home was still there — winter birds still darted over the gazebo he had built near the water’s edge — but it almost certainly would never be his again. Less than two months before his return from the war, the bank’s agents sold the property to a buyer in Chicago for $76,000.

Since then, Sergeant Hurley has been on an odyssey through the legal system, with little hope of a happy ending — indeed, the foreclosure that cost him his home may also cost him his marriage. “Brandie took this very badly,” said Sergeant Hurley, 45, a plainspoken man who was disabled in Iraq and is now unemployed. “We’re trying to piece it together.”

And... of course no white collar criminal guilty of stealing this soldier's home is ever going to go to jail. No, those long jail terms are for the "real crooks". The guys who do a stick-up at the corner store and steal $100. This idea of taking a soldier's home? That can't be a crime. That's "just business", right?