The rank economic cheerleading in the guise of “news” printed by the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and the rest of the financial press never ceases to amaze. But on the heels of Congress' pathetic capitulation to Wall Street over the weekend you have to wonder if even the robo-writers who compose the headlines are on the take.
How could anyone in the right mind label this weekend's CRomnibus abomination “A Rare Bipartisan Success for Congress”? Apparently, that unaccountable plaudit was bestowed upon Washington by the WSJ solely because it avoided another government shutdown.
And one that was of its own making at that. After all, we are already 75 days into the new fiscal year, yet Congress had not yet passed a single appropriations bill. So once again it had set itself up for the usual mid-night scramble behind closed doors where the pork barrel overflows and sundry K-street lobbies stick-up the joint and then demand immediate passage—–sight unseen—–in the name of keeping the Washington Monument open on the morrow.
Not only did Citigroup and the rest of the big Wall Street banks succeed in gutting the “push-out” requirements of Dodd-Frank, thereby extending their lease to gamble in the derivatives market with FDIC (i.e. taxpayer) guaranteed money. Crony Capitalism also got a huge bonanza in the form of a 10X increase in the contribution limit to party committees. Now the heavy hitters can actually give $230,000 annually to the GOP and Dem campaign committees. And this is supposed to merit praise?
Yes, this game has been going on for years. But the fact that the nation's leading financial newspaper was witless enough to describe it as a “success” is something comparatively new. What has happened is that the deafening clamor from the Wall Street casino for endless winnings has subordinated all else. Even a brief government shutdown is now verboten——-not because it would have any deleterious effect in the real world where virtually 80% of domestic operations are exempted under the “health and safety” clause, anyway. No, the purported danger is that it might prompt a panicked sell-off in the stock market.
