The Talking Dog

July 23, 2010, Ever thus


A special master charged with "tut tutting" but with little actual power to do anything about it has concluded that major Wall Street banks... wait for it... gave out "excessive bonuses" to their most beloved insiders during the 2008 financial crisis. The special master whose job seems to be to "tut tut" (as 11 of the 17 institutions that received what many thought then was unnecessary federal bailout money have easily paid it back... with the miniscule interest demanded, it seems there is little if any ability or authority to "claw back" the "excessive" bonuses which were paid by such behemoths as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase) concluded that around "80%" of a particular pool of a billion and a half dollars in bonuses were "questionable."

Where has Mr. Feinberg been for the last several years? Also... without the authority to force disgorgement... what's the point of what he's doing? Folks, greed is good. That's the defining ethos of our social system. The fact that our most successful entities-- rapacious financial and "health care" sectors should be against the law in their present forms... is irrelevant. Ditto the fact that they are our most successful "industries" at a time when the rest of "our economy" writ large actually produces little if anything of value. Sure, there was once a time when people would "self-check" their own actions based on whether things "looked good."

But those days are over. It's every White man (and notwithstanding our purportedly enlightened society, it's STILL by and large WHITE MAN) for himself, whether it looks good or not. And so, it's just another day in our world where more and more people can easily perceive the end of the world in sight... but under no circumstances, the end of capitalism...

Ever thus, friends. Ever thus...,