"Austerity Can't Be Just for Regular People" by Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone.

[applegrove]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/austerity-cant-be-a-one-way-street-20120508?utm_source=dailynewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Austerity Can't Be Just for Regular People
by Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone

"SNIP......................................................

It didn’t take long to crank up the backlash against European voters. This is inevitable whenever a socialist wins a major election, but particularly now, when new French president François Hollande rode to victory shouting, "Austerity can no longer be inevitable!"

This sounds like the beginning of what will be a very heated debate over who has to pay for the excesses of the financial crisis. It was previously assumed that everybody but the actual financial services sector would have to pay, but voters in Europe now are refusing to go along, sparking a wave of eye-rolling editorials in the financial press. Even David Brooks got into the act today, penning a lugubrious editorial about the errant political instincts of the populist masses here and abroad.

Markets all over the world freaked out over the prospect of having ignorant European voters meddling in the recovery process the geniuses of the high finance world had already painstakingly laid out for them. The model for economic progress in the financial bubble era, after all, is supposed to go something like this:

1. Let banks inflate massive asset bubbles with the aid of cheap or even free government cash, and tons of leverage;
2. Before it all explodes, carve out gigantic sums for bonuses and compensation for the companies that inflated those bubbles;
3. After it explodes, get the various governments to bail those companies out;
4. Pay for it all by slashing services to what’s left of the middle class.

........................................SNIP"



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/austerity-cant-be-a-one-way-street-20120508#ixzz1uL5WYXsJ

[JDPriestly]

1. Taibbi reminds us that what we now call capitalism isn't about capital at all.

It isn't about investment in socially useful projects. It is about creating illusions and pretending that everyone can be as wealthy as the 1%.

What a fool's paradise.

[wickerwoman]

2. Was just going to have a rant about this

as my local paper had a story about how Hollande's election posed a threat to the "tough love" proposals from the EU... as if the financial sector and the powers that be were just concerned parents trying to do what was best for their unruly teenage underclasses instead of craven fraudsters trying to shove all the consequences of their irresponsibility onto those who can least afford to pay for it.

I haven't seen a piece of newspaper spin that pissed me off so much since the early Bush years.

[pansypoo53219]

3. damn strait.

publikkklans only want partisan sacrifice.