A Month Old Now...

...But still deserves to be posted. It's Matt Taibbi's story on Goldman Sachs-

The Great American Bubble Machine-
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again

To me, the big political story of 2009 so far (other than health-care, natch... more on that later) is how the economic collapse of 2007-2008, which was supposedly going to shake the American economic status quo to its core, has essentially changed nothing ... other than putting countless more Americans out of work. The bailouts and back-room deals of 2008 coupled with the failures this year to get any meaningful Wall Street/banking reforms passed have ensured that the same system that nearly destroyed the global economy will remain untouched. Nobody likes learning lessons and it seems that we all collectively decided not to.

And what passes for economic reporting in this country isn't helping. We have publications like Newsweek insisting that the recession is over... while simultaneously acknowledging that conditions on the ground (jobs, foreclosures, etc) haven't improved yet. So why "over"? Because Wall Street had a few bubble-licious good weeks? I'm not seeing anyone on a large forum asking these questions.

And the President who hired Larry Summers-- yes, this Larry Summers-- as his top economic adviser is supposedly a socialist.

There's that old cliche that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and I think that's apt here. And when the next economic crisis hits us down the road, it will be very hard not to feel that we have no one to blame but ourselves.