Rats and Ships, Brokers and the Economy

In the past two weeks a couple of Wall Street insiders, one of which was particularly highly placed, came forward and blew their whistles. Wall Street is corrupt!!

Really?

What the headline should read is, "Wall Street Corrupt, Working Hand in Hand with the Government, Looting the Country, We've Always Known It, and the Rubes Don't Give a Shit."

That this group of craven berserkers are ripping out the economic heart of the country has been in plain view since 2008. The press can care less, and what coverage they give is not unlike their coverage of torture. They don't call it a war crime or even torture. It is enhanced interrogation. The coverage of the greatest economic crime of the millennia is similarly watered down--so much so that the government has treated these criminals to huge wads of cash and immunity from the perp walk. So, if we've been perfectly capable of ignoring and not reporting (Except for notable exception Matt Taibbi at The Rolling Stones magazine) the ever more disgusting revelations of massive fraud, theft, and chicanery for the past six years, why do we suddenly see this huge shot across the bow?

What may be happening is that someone who has been at the heart of the beast for some time and who has been witnessing this Grand Larceny with no qualms, finally saw something that scared even their black heart. Doesn't that send goosebumps up your spine? Imagine that, a Wall Street broker so disgusted that even they cry foul.

So, what is it that they saw? I imagine them finally getting up the nerve to sneak down that hallway where at its end pulses a breathing door, hellish red light streams from the threshold, smoke curls out, and strange guttural noises are chopped short by whip cracks. They open the door and see something so heinous, so frightening, that they know, finally know with certainty, that the jig is up and that they must tell someone before the beast is loosed. One of the traders mentioned a trillion dollars in hidden derivatives, something we've known about for some time with little coming of it, but he or she seems to think that the timer is off and running, that we are about to be overwhelmed.

Well, now what? Every responsible person with a voice has begged for an investigation. None came. Will we see a sudden and intense reflection on our sins? I doubt it.

The problem is, the rubes could care less and the powers that be know it. They know they have the hapless geeks by the short hairs, that the citizen rubes are only focused on day to day endorphin management through recreational shopping. But, hold on!! Wait a minute! Perhaps in knowing this only too well, they also know what will happen when the consumer binky is popped out of its pouting baby orifice and the hoi polloi no longer have that pacifier to quell the beast known as existential angst.

Riots! Crime, perhaps directed at the one percent! Taxes!! Real Taxes!!!! Rotten cabbages hurled at them as they roll by in the tumbrel to their destiny!

We can only hope so.