"None of it was technically illegal".

Explains why Hillarity did not Ensue ...

As the shrill anti-Russian diatribes and irresponsible calls from one of the losers of the Presidential election for Revolution and Inaugural disruptions continue to escalate in their absurdity and intolerance for dissent, perhaps we should give more than just a cursory glance at the above-pictured history of, not only the financial crisis itself, but the lack of any of the "Change" or even "Hope" of "Change", other than spare, that candidate Obama promised yet President Obama renigged on.

Mr. Taibbi, for one thing, points out how the ACA, the program that bears his name and that the GOP is losing no time in attacking, proved the government's utter helplessness to police whole sectors of society. Far from fixing the health care industry, what it proved instead, he avers, is that this government couldn't even win back the right to regulate it, despite a massive mandate. It further cemented into place the new America, the one

"In which companies compete not by attracting customers with good service, but by using the power of the state to protect markets and force customers into the fold."

In other words, what I referred to in previous posts as Capitolism. Because it's not just the Health(we don't)care industry, all GSE's have the same effect by manipulating the market by having the government guarantee their profitability, making their companies too rigged to fail: the rich take the profits, the country takes the risks. 

Lockheed, Martin Marrietta, and Boeing are all GSE's. So is Halliburton, KBR, Exxon/ Mobil.....ok, ok, you get it, the entire free-for-all market system is a rigged game, and that's the whole reason it's flailing. Without the backing of the US government, US Corporations would collapse. That's what I mean by Capitolism, and that's what Taibbi defines. 

The difference being, that in 2009, when I wrote the above-referenced post, few would have agreed with me, whereas now, most of the deplorables, and even more of Bernie Sanders supporters, are aware that this is how America works. 

"Our real government is kept hidden from view, and the truly weighty decisions about where our society is going and what rules it is going to live by are made mostly in private, by groups of anonymous lawyers and bureaucrats and lobbyists, (bought) government officials and industry reps" (ie, by collusion).

The tell in his book, is when Matt names John Fuld, Cassano, John Mack, John Thain, and he could have named myriads more, but who got off, not just scot-free, but with the hard earned money of their victims stuffed into their pockets, thier bank accounts, and their offshore tax havens (yes, they didn't even see why they should have to pay taxes on them, after all, only little people pay taxes, the ones they left with nothing, to pay them with) and claims, "None of it was technically illegal".

In other words, fraud is not only okay, buy it is the business of America; it's not an unsavory side-effect of Cowboy Capitalism, but it is the very heart (and the celebrated heartlessness) of it.

From the epilogue of Taibbi's paperback edition:

"Bear Stearns hedge funds ended up losing $1.6 billion. This is what a Wall St. crime looks like: financial players lying to investors, with documentary evidence to prove it. Yet a jury found (them) not guilty ... ordinary people in a jury box could not bring themselves to see the Bear funds' collapse as a punishable crime". This though they were knowingly selling "essentially worthless counterfeit marketed as solid perfectly hedged investments - Drano sold as dope."

They literally stole our future and we couldn't believe they deserved jail time. And the reason? 

"It won't change anything."

And that's the point. That's what, in my not so humble opinion, is the reason the electorate of the red states rejected en-masse Hillary Clinton. In the land of Griftopia, who else is more appropriate to be head of State than the King of Grift himself, Donald Trump? If the meaning of Free enterprise means that the poor are left defenseless in the face of untrammeled greed to be trampled under the heels of a politically-connected minority of hucksters, then let's expose the middle classes, that have abandoned us to this fate and then turned on us and called us deplorables, to the same fraudsters and let them see what it's like. Let's see how much they like being spit on and told they deserve it when their lives blow up in their collective face.

I'm not saying I agree with this, nor that what happens next is all the fault of Liberals, but I am saying I understand where they're coming from and that it is surely not the fault of the Russians who are being so ridiculously scapegoated so as to gloss over the myriad failings of, not only the Clinton candidacy, but the Obama presidency, both of which had far more to do with their sense of entitlement and their Bush-like hubris than any machinations of the Russian government. Which, btw, at least didn't murder anyone, whereas the cyber attacks from the Stuxnet program that the US unleashed on Iran's nuclear scientists, did. You would think in a country that calls itself Christian, someone would know that you reap what you sow, and using cyber attacks to sabotage centrifuges, despite knowing it will kill those in proximity to the machines you're destroying, is evil. It may have a good reason, but, like civilian bombings, it is still evil, and

Such is the lesson that all school children learn, 

Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.  

As far as the 3 or so million more votes that Mrs. Clingon (sic) received than Mr. Trump, that is now being harped upon so scurrilously, this objection, coming from the camp of someone who has been in politics, oh, I don't know all her life, is just plain whining. No one  better knows how the electoral college works than a woman whose been involved in at least a half dozen Presidential elections, and if her campaign opted to spend twice as much as her adversary spent, but allocated it in the wrong states at the wrong time, blaming it on The Donald smacks of so many sour grapes.

So good-bye President Obama. It is my belief, that despite having good reason for declaring all the crimes on Wall St and in the boardrooms of financial companies all over the country as "the Past", and saying that we had to "look forward", pretty much gives sanction to rampant criminality (as ALL crimes that are punished are for deeds committed in the past), I  understand that it was for what you believed to be the good of the country. And it worked. 

This century will see the Obama presidency as an island of tranquility sandwiched between two chaotic eras of GOP perfidy and rampant criminality. What alternative did you have? To bring those bankster outlaws to justice in the midst of a global depression while hundreds of thousand were losing their jobs every week with millions were being thrown out of their homes? I don't think so. As Newt Gingrich (blech) said, the first job of the American President is the safety of the American people, and unlike your predecessor, and most likely your successor, at that you succeeded, and perhaps that's all we can expect anymore, as sad as that may be.