This hasn't been a very good week for the one percenters, has it? Anti-NATO protesters chanting outside their cozy dinners, bloggers releasing the details of ALEC's latest schemes, people showing up at Timothy Geithner's door to bitch, bitch, bitch! Don't they know who he is - and who his friends are? I guess the National People's Action and National Domestic Workers Alliance don't really care:

Yesterday, more than 1,000 clergy, homeowners, students, family farmers, unemployed workers and community leaders with National People’s Action and National Domestic Workers Alliance went to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s home to demand he support a Robin Hood tax and a thorough investigation of the bankers who caused the mortgage crisis.

“We didn’t want to be at Geithner’s house,” Bobby Tolbert of VOCAL-NY, an affiliate of NPA and a leader at the action. “But we want a treasury secretary that stands with people over bankers. Geithner has consistently undermined proposals for a Robin Hood tax and stalled the mortgage fraud task force investigation.”

Barb Kalbach, a family farmer and member of Iowa CCI, an NPA affiliate, said community leaders have met with Geithner before but little progress has been made to ease the crushing impact of the mortgage and financial crisis on the American people.

Geithner must “quit protecting the big banks, write down the mortgages and keep us in our homes and stop the foreclosure crisis around the U.S.,” Kalbach said speaking into a microphone while standing on Geithner’s driveway. “Right now, today, he continues to impede the process of investigating the banks that crashed our economy. And he’s blocking a tiny tax of less than half of one percent. It’s small change for Wall Street, but big change for America.”

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Working America has launched an action campaign calling on Americans to contact their state attorneys general and demand a fair settlement that holds big banks accountable for their role in the financial crisis. In particular, the focus is on making sure that banks are accountable for fraud and abuse of homeowners that was widespread in the lead-up to the recession and the foreclosure crisis that has continued after the recession ended.

The fear is that the attorneys general will accept a settlement that will let the banks get away with the practices they engaged in that hurt Americans and the economy. The currently proposed settlement also doesn't go far enough in helping underwater homeowners.

From the press release announcing the action:

Working America has launched a campaign calling on the White House and all 50 state attorneys general to hold big banks accountable for corrupt mortgage practices that led to the foreclosure and financial crises that have left millions without homes and more at risk of losing their homes.

The current proposed settlement would only partially help about 2 million homeowners stuck with underwater mortgages– barely 20 percent of those facing foreclosure. The settlement also does not prevent future foreclosures, or create any accountability or restitution for working families who were defrauded by predatory schemes, reports say.

Experts have called the current proposed settlement “meaningless” in offering relief or justice to homeowners deceived by improper mortgage practices.

Meanwhile, the largest mortgage servicers that are being investigated for deceptive practices–Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial –would be essentially let off the hook.

“This would be pocket change for the big banks and a travesty for working families,” said Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum. “Our working-class members around the country are not debating this – they want a thorough investigation of criminal wrongdoing, accountability and appropriate restitution. They do not want another bank bailout.”

About 7.5 million homes are currently in the foreclosure process. An additional 11 million are at risk – threatening many of Working America’s 3 million members with the loss of their homes.

Take action at the Working America website.

Two articles this weekend caught my eye as a great study in contrasts, one by George Will called Burning Down the House, the other by Frank Rich, titled Obama’s Original Sin. They both discuss the 2008 financial collapse and policies surrounding it, and they are both critical of some people in the Democratic Party, but the resemblance pretty much ends there.

Will’s column is a particularly remarkable example of how modern corporate conservatives are so worshipful of the free market über alles that when they read something critical of it, they are only capable of recognizing the nuggets of anti-government and anti-Democratic Party analysis in it. Will’s column recounted how he had just read the book “Reckless Endangerment” by New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson and financial wunderkind Joshua Rosner, and how it is full of analysis documenting the terribleness of government, liberal policies, and Democrats. According to Will, that is the single overwhelming message of the book, that progressive policies of all kinds were responsible for the housing crash — that the Community Reinvestment Act, efforts to stop racial discrimination, Bill Clinton, and an old Mondale campaign aide who had become head of Fannie Mae created an evil vortex that destroyed the poor, benighted free market which would have sorted everything out nicely for everyone if left to its own devices.

Of course, Will believed this before he read “Reckless Endangerment,” and has been making the same points in a number of columns for three years running. And he will believe all of this until the day he dies, no matter what books he reads in the meantime that might contradict this view. You know how I know this? Because “Reckless Endangerment” is not all about how perfect the free market is in the banking sector. The authors, who are brilliant writers on the financial sector whose columns and blog posts I have avidly read for years, are not free market banking apologists. They do have a lot of negative things to say about Fannie Mae, as they certainly should; it evolved into an out-of-control corporate monster that beat back every attempt at even modest regulation. But they are also extremely critical of the banking industry, and argue for a far tougher regulatory cop on the beat throughout the financial sector. You wouldn’t know that from Will, though: apparently the only sentences he read in the book were the ones critical of Fannie Mae and its CEO Jim Johnson, who had once been an aide to Walter Mondale.

Will is an emblematic modern conservative. Everything about the free market is glorious, to be worshipped at some fundamentalist altar no matter its contradictions, and everything about the government (except defense) is evil. Any nugget of information you find that reinforces that worldview, you shout it out over the hilltops. But if you run across some facts and analysis, such as those in “Reckless Endangerment” that run contrary to that point of view, you just ignore it or forget about it.

Frank Rich’s column was a classic one for him as well. He pulled no punches, being very critical of President Obama and his administration for their handling of the Wall Street banks and the economy in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. But Rich’s approach was very different from Will’s. Rather than being blindly convinced that government is good or bad, Rich wants to know the answer to a simple question: Which side are the people who run our government going to be on?

To me, that question is the most critical one there is when it comes to government policy. I don’t believe that government is inherently good — having lived through Vietnam, Watergate, J. Edgar Hoover’s corruption at the FBI, the massive deficit producing tax-cuts-for-the-rich policies of Reagan and Bush, the S&L crisis, financial deregulation, media consolidation, the Iraq war, Katrina, and the utter economic incompetence of the President George W. Bush economic years. I have no illusions that government as a whole is always on the side of most people. But what I want and believe in is a government of, by, and for the people — most especially for the people. Given the size and power of the financial industry, and other huge multinational corporations, I want a government that is on our side in making sure these massive companies don’t destroy our economy (again), and then demand bailouts (again) because they are too big to fail. I want a government on our side so that big insurance companies don’t tell people they can’t have coverage anymore because they got sick. I want a government on the side of senior citizens who have worked hard their whole lives and now want to live with some modest measure of dignity and economic security through Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid coverage. I want a government on the side of working class families thrown out of their jobs and homes through no fault of their own. I want a government that is on the side of our kids and helps them get a good education. I want a government that is on the side of small business and start-up entrepreneurs as they work their butts off trying to compete with huge corporations.

The Republican Party and conservatives like George Will seems to have been captured lock, stock, and barrel by the wealthiest and most powerful special interests. That is the only side they are on, and the policies they are proposing will only make things worse — a whole lot worse — for regular folks. People like Frank Rich — and Rosner and Morgenson for that matter — are critical of Democrats when they get too close to those wealthy special interests. Rich argues that it is only by standing up the powers that be on the economy, and standing up for the middle class, that Democrats will find their political way. I couldn’t agree more.

The film "Inside Job" is a wonderful walk through the Wall Street meltdown and how bankers managed to make off with billions here and abroad while ordinary folks lost their jobs, their homes and their savings. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. You can watch it on Amazon on Demand or just get the DVD. Either way, it's really a must-see and a must-share film.

If you're not angry after you watch it, you should be. And if you're still not, I'm going to give you another reason to be. Debtors' prisons are making a comeback here in the United States, thanks to the Bush-era "bankruptcy reform", Republicans, and greedy corporations.

Wall Street Journal:

More than a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who can't or won't pay to be jailed. Judges have signed off on more than 5,000 such warrants since the start of 2010 in nine counties with a total population of 13.6 million people, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal of filings in those counties. Nationwide figures aren't known because many courts don't keep track of warrants by alleged offense. In interviews, 20 judges across the nation said the number of borrowers threatened with arrest in their courtrooms has surged since the financial crisis began.

Check out this snippet of David Walker, Pete Peterson lackey, talking about how we need to get back to meting out consequences for debt default, and specifically discussing debtors' prisons:

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What makes me saddest of all things in the world is this: the vast majority of the time the right thing to do morally is the right thing to do in terms of broad self-interest, and yet we don’t believe that and we do the wrong thing, thinking we must, thinking that we’re making the “hard decisions”.

This spans the spectrum of issues. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about foreign affairs, where the money used on Iraq and Afghanistan could have rebuilt America and made it more prosperous. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about health care, where everyone knew that the right thing to do was single payer or some other form of comprehensive healthcare, which would have reduced bankruptcies massively, saved 6% of GDP and massive numbers of lives. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the financial crisis, where criminally prosecuting those who engaged in fraud (the entire executive class of virtually ever major financial firm) and nationalizing the major banks, wiping out the shareholders and making the bondholders eat their losses was the right thing to do, and didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about drug policy, where the “war on drugs” has accomplished nothing except destabilizing multiple countries and giving the US the largest prison population proportional to population in the entire world and where legalizing marijuana, soft opiates and coca leaves would save billions of dollars, reduce violence, help stabilize Mexico and would help tax receipts. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about food, where we subsidize the most unhealthy foods possible and engage in practices which have reduced the nutritional content of food by 40% in the last half century. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about environmental pollutants, which have contributed to a massive rise in chronic diseases so great it amounts to an epidemic.

And on, and on, and on.

Now the fact is that there is no free lunch. When you spend money on war, you can’t spend it on education or health or crumbling infrasture or civilian technology. When you allow oligopolies to control the marketplace and buy up politicians, the cost of that is a decreased standard of living. When you refuse to deal effective with externalized health pollution, whether from soda pop or carcinogens, you pay for that with the death of people you care for from heart disease, cancer and other illnesses.

The response is “we have to do this to protect ourselves/to make a profit”.

No, you don’t.

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Economics 101: Healthy economies include low unemployment rates. Low unemployment rates mean consumers are consuming/buying goods. Consumers buying goods stimulates the economy, creates growth.

Economics 101 corollary: Sluggish economies include high unemployment rates, tight credit. In sluggish economies, consumers buy less, pay down debt, and the economy remains sluggish.

Until the unemployment rates drop, at which time more consumers have more money with which to consume.

Makes sense, right? Well, yes, until you read this Washington Post article where they interview corporate CEOs about why it might be that they're sitting on piles of cash and not hiring. Then it just gets really, really weird.

According to these CEOs, it's not really the national debt, the deficit or a need for more stimulus that's keeping them from hiring and allowing them to hoard cash. No, it's the consumer, who sparks a big no-confidence vote in them.

They blame their profound caution on their view that U.S. consumers are destined to disappoint for many years. As a result, they say, the economy is unlikely to see the kind of almost unbroken prosperity of the quarter-century that preceded the financial crisis.

They really don't address the question of why they're hoarding trillions in cash instead of reinvesting in their business or {gasp} hiring again. They have some vague objections to legislation that's passed in this Congress, but nothing specific.

But when Speer and other executives were pressed on the role that tax and regulatory policies play in hiring, they drew only vague connections. Speer said his decision whether to hire is driven primarily by demand for his products. Orders are coming in strong enough that he is running about 20 hours a week of overtime. So he is weighing whether to hire two or three additional manufacturing workers.

None of the executives interviewed linked a specific new government initiative with a specific decision to refrain from hiring.

What we have here is the corporate Catch-22 boogie. We know it and they know it. We, the consumers, cannot and will not be spending anything until we're employed again. They the businesses, can, but will not, hire until we spend again. They would prefer to pay existing employees overtime than to hire new employees to fill the ranks of the employed.

I don't buy it. It sounds like the kind of political gobbledegook that gets spit out when the answer is right there in front of everyone like a pink elephant in a tutu. These guys are holding out for a Congress that they believe will give them the tax breaks and regulatory relief they expect and have been used to receiving in the past.

I called it a Catch-22, but really, it's a siege. They are mounting a siege against the middle class in this country -- their own customers, by the way -- in order to get leverage and the right to rewrite rules, including union contracts and pay rates that are below those of the past.

This is why small businesses really do need Congress' intervention. If they can get credit, they'll hire and we'll get some creative new industries going instead of just caving into the fat cats with trillions waiting to be sent off to Haley Barbour or some other teabag organization to defeat progress.

Oh dear God, I hate admitting it when anyone over at the Corner is right about something but... AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH... Nicole Gelinas is right:

The financial system's failures made themselves obvious starting in 2007 in part because legislators and regulators thought that they could conjure up on command not only wisdom and competence but omniscience.

In the years leading up to the financial crisis, regulators allowed financial firms such as AIG to create derivatives that evaded the old-fashioned limits on borrowing and trading. The people in charge figured that the financial guys had figured out every angle and made these things perfectly safe.

Regulators, too, allowed banks to borrow far more than old-fashioned rules would have allowed on mortgage-related securities and other instruments rated AAA — because competent people had determined that such securities could never fail.

Finally, regulators allowed people to buy houses with no money down — even though we learned in the 1920s that it's not a good idea to let people borrow limitlessly to speculate that the price of something will continue to rise.

The lesson to be learned here is that we need borrowing and trading rules that apply to everyone and everything for those times when bankers, regulators, and tens of millions of ordinary Americans aren't right.

The bill offers no evidence that anyone in Congress has learned this lesson.

The essential problem with the financial reform package the Democrats have put together is that it relies far too much on the discrepancy of regulators and not enough on hard law. So instead of breaking up banks whose assets exceed a certain level of GDP, we have merely given regulators the ability to break up banks if and when they pose grave risks to the economy. As anyone who has followed the wacky hijinks of our government during the Bush years knows, regulators often suck, especially when they're sleeping with the people they're supposed to be regulating.

So here's how it's going to play out: At some point in the future, we will have a Republican president who will appoint Levi Johnston to head up the SEC or Treasury or the Fed. Levi will have all kinds of powers at his disposal, whether it's breaking up big banks, raising interest rates to curtail asset bubbles or enforcing strict leverage requirements. But instead of utilizing any of the vast powers at his disposal, Levi smokes dope and pleasures himself while watching porn all day long. Five days after taking office, the economy crashes again and Levi is trotted out in front of the cameras to tell us that "nobody could have predicted" this sort of thing would ever happen.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you put your faith in the competence of regulators rather than creating hard law. A real financial reform package would have held the banks to strict leverage requirements, would have forced them to stop prop trading if they wanted to retain access to the Fed's discount window and would have broken up the largest financial institutions. Instead we have a large complex nightmare that is riddled with loopholes that will allow the banks to behave just as irresponsibly as they've done in the past.

So take comfort, America. The only thing now saving us from another financial crisis is the wisdom and competence of Federal Reserve Chairman Levi Johnston. Huzzah!

It seems that, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which allowed uncontrolled corporate money into elections, that (surprise!) Republicans have a huge warchest from outside actors like the Chamber of Commerce:

On the left hand side of the chart is a list of ten Republican aligned institutions, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Family Research Council. Next to it is a column listing the amount of money each group has pledged to spend by Election Day. A third column on the right details what those groups actually spent in 2008 on federal elections.

The number at the bottom delivers the key message. If their pledges are fulfilled, these ten groups will unleash more than $200 million in election-focused spending -- roughly $37 million more than every single independent group spent on the 2008 presidential campaign combined. This time around, almost every single penny will be going to Republican candidates or causes.

So, how did this happen?

First, Democrats didn't make an all out effort to torpedo either Roberts, or more reasonably, Alito. With both on the Supreme Court, decisions like Citizens United were inevitable.

Second, when given a historic opportunity to break the power of the rich and corporations by not bailing them out, Democrats bailed them out. They did not make shareholders get wiped out (as they deserved, they took the profits from housing bubble fraud, after all) and they did not let the bondholders take their losses. Be very clear, this was never about saving the economy, the trillions of dollars used to bail out these corporations could have been loaned directly to consumers and businesses which needed loans. In fact, at this point, it is entirely likely that bailouts made things worse, not better.

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Crooked Timber: Plucky King Leopold.

Angry Bear: What caused the budget deficit before the financial crisis?

The Aristocrats: Come see our beautiful beaches!

Steve Audio: "Battle-Tested" Meg Whitman.

Morialekafa: The disappearance of the concept of "doing the right thing."

The Satirical Political Report: The GOP plan on unemployment.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

Protesters riot yesterday in Toronto at the G20.

It's really, really simple. The rich crashed the world economy. They were bailed out, with their wealth having almost entirely recovered and corporate profits likewise have pretty much recovered. Now, at the G20, the world's leaders are discussing how to make regular people pay for the rich's follies.

The world's developed countries have built extensive public health systems, promised citizens a paycheck for life and erected a welter of protections around some industries and types of jobs. Now their leaders are conferring over a singular dilemma: how to take some of it back without undermining the economies they are trying to sustain.

You notice that somehow, no one is talking about going back to 1950's levels of progressive taxation, with a top rate around 90%. No, what they're talking about is making the middle class and the poor pay for the sins of the rich.

The key thing here to understand is this: there is no crisis for the rich or corporations anymore, therefore as far as they are concerned, there is no crisis.

Dick Durbin once said, ""And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

It's not just the banks, of course, they are just one of the apex predators of the current court system, along with the Pentagon, pharma and various other predators. The systems is simple enough — they take care of Congress, staffers and everyone else who matters, and those people take care of them. Even if a congress member is not reelected, if they went down doing the bidding of monied interests, they are taken care of. If they don't do the bidding of their masters, on the other hand, their post-Congress career will be much less pleasant.

At the G20, today, what is being discussed is how to take away what's left of your economic future. Ordinary Americans didn't see a pay raise in the last decade. Not only won't they see one this decade, they'll take a loss, and now even the European experiment in taking care of the population is on the chopping board.

This is your future being decided, and no, they don't think you have a say in it.