In the News...

History asserts itself... again

[original photo caption] history repeats itself—

the robber barons of the middle ages and the robber barons of today

• More evidence that the banks have just walked off scot-free with billions, which they will sell back to us for an obscene profit.

Glenn Greenwald lays it all out with the help of Senator Dick Durbin.
"Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress -- according to one of that institution's most powerful members -- demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is."

Greenwald also observes
"One might think it would be a big news story for the second most-powerful member of the U.S. Senate to baldly state that the Congress is "owned" by the bankers who spawned the financial crisis and continue to dictate the government's actions. But it won't be. The leading members of the media work for the very corporations that benefit most from this process. Establishment journalists are integral and well-rewarded members of the same system and thus cannot and will not see it as inherently corrupt (instead, as Newsweek's Evan Thomas said, their role, as "members of the ruling class," is to "prop up the existing order," "protect traditional institutions" and "safeguard the status quo").
That Congress is fully owned and controlled by a tiny sliver of narrow, oligarchical, deeply corrupted interests is simultaneously so obvious yet so demonized (only Unserious Shrill Fringe radicals, such as the IMF's former chief economist, use that sort of language) that even Durbin's explicit admission will be largely ignored. Even that extreme of a confession (Durbin elaborated on it with Ed Schultz last night) hardly causes a ripple."

Even Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg. says the Obama administration plan for saving the U.S. banking industry may be doomed.

Go ahead, suit yourself.

• Texas Governor suggested (somewhat off-handedly, but still) that his state may consider secession. NPRs David Faris agrees.


• Obama's 100 day report card from Salon.com

• Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia writes in the NYT about the urgent need to restructure the university.