Working Life

Citibank’s decision to settle a huge lawsuit over misrepresentations it made to investors is yet another moment to consider how people who contributed to the financial crisis just skate free and clear. Such is the good fortune of Robert Rubin — unscathed, rich and, hard to believe, still listened to.

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Well, the answer is probably no — at least so far. I’m all for the Treasury socking away some money. But, the money collected for these pathetic fines (pathetic in the big scheme) does not come close to outweighing the pain these manipulators, crooks, big-shot financiers imposed on tens of millions of people around the globe. It’s a travesty.

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Oh, Goldilocks. If you only knew how much you were needed in this big, bad budget fight. Cuz one of the budgets is, to paraphrase your wise words, just too damn loony (courtesy of Paul Ryan), one just leaves anyone who wants a sane society feeling a bit cold (thank you Sen. Patti Murray) but one is just right (a big bow for the Congressional Progressive Caucus).

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Yesterday, I asked how it is possible that people who are either raving lunatics (read: Michelle Bachmann) or just simply have loony ideas, which are just covers for ripping off the country, still get taken seriously. Paul Ryan, take a bow.

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Why are certain people taken seriously? It still astonishes me — and maybe it’s a sad comment on the level of debate — but it’s just amazing that anyone still listens to people like Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich and the lot. They are just nuts.

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We don’t give a fuck about you. That message is sponsored and paid for by U.S. corporations — no matter the utterly phony and bullshit use of American flags or homey cultural images that you might see in advertising. They just do not care.

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Chained CPI is one of the dumbest things in the very dumb discussions about the phony debt and deficit crisis. Well, dumb doesn’t quite capture the point. It’s more like robbery disguised as economics. And the president is foolish to even consider it.

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Let’s be cautious about the jobs report. And what lies ahead.

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They can’t help themselves. The CEOs who run big corporations are like heroin addicts — once they get a taste of a scheme to rob more money from taxpayers, they just want more, more and more. And here they go again.

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Ron Paul is mostly a whacky person, with some bizarre theories and beliefs. But, under the rubric of a broken clock is right twice a day, he hooked up with Barney Frank to produce a program to cut fairly significantly into the defense budget and he also had a obsession — a good one that sometimes veered a bit into paranoia — about the secrecy of the Federal Reserve Board. Now, comes his son, Rand, a Tea Party loony generally speaking, and tries to get the country to focus, rightly, on the secrecy around the Administration’s secret drone programs.

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