OT: Frank Rich in the Sunday New York Times notes that Wall Streeters have put a big one over on the confused American people. He compares Madoff's thievery to the much bigger robbery pulled off by Wall Streeters. Writes Rich, "The estimated $65 billion involved in Madoff's flimflam is dwarfed by the more than $2.5 trillion paid so far by American taxpayers to bail out those masters of Wall Street's universe. AIG alone has already left us on the hook for $180 billion. It's hard for those who didn't have money with Madoff to get worked up about him when so many of the era's real culprits have slipped away scot-free. Already, some of these same players are up to similarly greedy shenanigans again, now that the coast seems to be clear.
"Washington had no choice but to ride to their rescue last fall to prevent an even greater systemic catastrophe. As the economist, Joseph Stiglitz wrote in this month's Vanity Fair, 'In the developing worlds, people look at Washington and see a system of government that allowed Wall Street to write self-serving rules which put at risk the entire global economy-- and then, when the day of reckoning came, turned to Wall Street to manage the recovery. They see continued re-distributions of wealth to the top of the pyramid, transparently at the expense of ordinary citizens....
"The Times reported on Thursday, the institutions that received the most bailout loot are often the biggest offenders. That would include the too-big-to-fail Citigroup, which has so far received $45 billion in taxpayers money, along with guarantees on $300 billion in toxic assets, to mitigate its reckless risk-taking during the reign of such obscenely rewarded (and now departed) executives as Charles Prince and Robert Rubin. While taxpayers will soon own some 34% of Citi, it is not only increasing our credit card interest rates (to nearly 30% in some cases) but raising its own base salaries (by 50%) to work around Washington's new restrictions on bonuses....
"What's uncontroversial and indisputable is that Goldman alumni have played key roles in both the Bush and Obama administrations' responses to the current crisis, even though Goldman has a big stake in the outcome. ... Goldman also rules at the New York Fed, a supposed monitor of Wall Street. Until May, the Fed's Chairman was serving simultaneously on the Goldman board. He resigned only after the Wall Street Journal reported that he was also still buying Goldman stock during his Fed tenure. At least the other failed watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission, has now cleaned house."
