Dear Commons Colleagues,
I don’t know how many of you had an opportunity to see part or all of the Goldman Sachs Senate hearings held yesterday but if you haven’t you must read the op-ed column in today’s NY Times by Maureen Dowd. She likens these hearings to the scene in the Godfather II where Michael Corleone is at a congressional hearing defending his family’s olive oil business. Here is a small snippet from her piece about the “Fabulous Fab”:
“In an e-mail to his girlfriend, he called his “Frankenstein” creation “a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: ‘Well, what if we created a “thing,” which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?’ ”
She concluded her column by mentioning that Goldman Sachs stock actually rose yesterday while these hearings were going on. Oh and so did the price of wholesale olive oil.
The full column can be viewed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/opinion/28dowd.html?th&emc=th
Tony
As Jimmy Paige once wrote – or was it Robert Plant? – “It makes me wonder”. I wonder what defect it is in the psychological makeup of a group of human beings that would have them putting the health and well being of millions of other human beings behind the private profit of a very few. Most of these lawmakers who live in the pockets of the Plutocracy call themselves “Christians”. Have they ever made a serious study of the books? You know! – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? – Those guys! How do they justify their actions? How do they sleep at night? We’re talkin’ major hypocrisy here! That’s what makes them so much fun to watch! I always get a certain twisted delight in watching their fake piety. Imagine Wendy O. Williams being cast as Bernadette of Lourdes; or Marilyn Manson as Mahatma Gandhi. It’s kind of the same thing.
Sooner or later our right wing friends, within the Congress and without, are going to be forced to admit that the era of anything goes deregulation was a really stupid idea. You can only sit calmly in a burning house, ignoring the flames all about you, for just so long. Sooner or later you’ll be forced to flee for your life. After making your escape, if you still refuse to acknowledge that the house is indeed on fire, you’re beyond the point where you can make rational decisions on your own. You’ve entered Librium Country, hombre!
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan