US now officially an oligarchy

$1.2 trillion bank bailout. $75 billion mortgage bailout. $787 billion stimulus spending plan. This is classic big government tactics on an unprecedented scale, but those who are putting this plan to bed are experimenting. That's all it is, a grand experiment by a few amateurs. President Obama himself has told us "We've never seen anything like this since the Great Depression." Therefore, nobody in the workforce at the moment has any personal experience of such matters.

If you believe, as most experts do, that the crisis we are experiencing has its roots in irresponsible spending and the unwise creation of debt, then do you really believe that more spending on this scale, with the resultant record level of national debt, can possibly be the answer?

More important than that however, is that these policies are being designed and executed by the very oligarchs that created this problem in the first place. Yes, that's right...I said oligarchs. Oligarchy is that form of government wherein power is exercised not by the people, but a very few powerful individuals who have the wherewithal to control the purse-strings of government and influence the shape of government policy. These spending bills have created a new form of government for the United States of America - an Oligarchy. It may come as a surprise to many however, to know that our powerful new oligarchs aren't politicians; they are the CEO's of the big banks. This is no emotional rhetoric either - it is a fact recognized by Simon Johnson, former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund.

Now lets explore a little deeper. How has it come to pass that these banks have so quickly convinced taxpayers to part with a whopping $1.2 trillion dollars to fix their mistakes and solve their problems? Its not hard to work out when you realize that Geithner's chief of staff was a principal lobbyist of Goldman Sachs, the new deputy secretary of state was a CEO of Citigroup, the new assistant to the President and deputy national security advisor for International Economic Affairs is a former Citigroup CFO, and even one his deputies also came from Citigroup and yet another new member of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board comes from UBS, which is being investigated for shady tax evasion deals on behalf of its wealthier clients. Is it unreasonable to assume that these guys don't have any conflicts of interest??. In fact I'm certain they have only one interest, and it isn't yours or mine. It's the interests of the financial industry.

Oh, and don't expect too much from the overseers at the House Financial Services Committee either. Two weeks ago, eight top bank CEOs were brought in to testify before that committee of Congress, and guess what...it has now been revealed publicly that almost every member of that Committee had received contributions from those banks during the previous year. Now it is clear how those CEO's felt invincible enough and arrogant enough to proceed with massive bonus payments we saw at the end of last year. What a rotten mess...and its got nowhere to go but down.