Courtesy of Tyler Durden
The only person who in the past made CNBC even remotely watchable, Dylan Ratigan, is out with a scathing review of the anti-symbiotic relationship between the American people and the Wall Street/DC Lobby/Regulatory complex, in a piece titled "Americans Have Been Taken Hostage."
The American people have been taken hostage to a broken system.
It is a system that remains in place to this day.
A system where bank lobbyists have been spending in record numbers to make sure it stays that way.
A system that corrupts the most basic principles of competition and fair play, principles upon which this country was built.
It is a system that so far has forced the taxpayer to provide the banks with the use of $14 trillion from the Federal Reserve, much of the $7 trillion outstanding at the US Treasury and $2.3 trillion at the FDIC.
A system partially built by the very people who currently advise our President, run our Treasury Department and are charged with its reform.
And most stunningly — it is a system that no one in our government has yet made any effort to fundamentally change.
Zero Hedge applauds Dylan’s effort to awake more people to the systemic threat that is not only the TBTF complex, but the effectively monopolistic concentration of every financial power imaginable in such glaring examples as Goldman Sachs, whose domination of sales, flow trading, prop trading, market making, liquidity provisioning, underwriting, corporate advisory, "analysis", and selective information release to key clients, all the while backstopped from any potential loss compliments of what has become an implicit balance sheet guarantee footed by the American people, is now nothing less than a monopolistic anti-trust issue.
Continuing with the Ratigan piece:
Last fall was an awakening for me, as it was for many in our country.
And yet, our Congress has yet to open its eyes, much less do anything about it. In fact conditions have never been better for the banks or worse for the rest of us.
Why is this? Who does our Government work for? How much longer will we as Americans tolerate it? And what, if anything, can we do about it?
As we approach the anniversary of the bailouts for our banks and insurers — and watch the multi-trillion taxpayer-funded programs at the Federal Reserve continue to support banks and subsidize their multibillion bonus pools, we must ask if our politicians represent the interests of America? Or those who would rob America of its money and its future?
As a country, we must demand that our politicians stop serving those whose business models are based on systemic theft and start serving those who seek to create value for others — the workers, innovators and investors who have made this country great.
A new generation of Americans has to emerge from behind the scenes: one that is untainted with the immense legacy conflicts of Wall Street lobby interests: individuals such as Ron Paul, Judge Rakoff, Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson, Senator Kaufman and many others, who we all know deep down inside speak the truth, and even if they have their own particular axe to grind, do so (at least for now) with the American public’s interest at heart. Yet more have to step up to the plate. We welcome Dylan’s piece as a rallying call for all those who share in the pursuit of integrity yet are ambivalent about the success of seeking truth in a world which rewards only cronyism, collusion, greed, speculation, fraud and excess. Those are not the qualities that have made America great, and if left unchecked, guarantee a decline and end in the American way of life, with nothing but a lasting memory of the virtues that drove America’s founding fathers to make it the great country it once used to be.
