Who are these people? I am not referring to the pathetic parents of "Balloon Boy," whose fake drama I have been unable to escape while on the treadmill this week, thanks to my gym's insistence on tuning its flat-screen TVs to Wolf Blitzer's nonstop self-parody.
The Colorado incident was significant only in the tawdriness of those who perpetrated the made-for-TV scam and their allies in the mindless media who covered this sham "reality" so relentlessly. But even so it was enough to push aside most consideration of the true hoax reported last week with far less fervor: the obscene rewards that Wall Street bankers bestowed upon themselves for ripping off our economy.
The people I want to know more about are the superrich who expect to be rewarded for their failures, like the folks at Goldman Sachs who will receive $16.71 billion in bonuses--an average of $530,000 per employee--this year after their company did as much as any to bring the world economy to the brink of disaster.
"The Guys from Government Sachs" is what the New York Times once called them in recognition of their chokehold on the federal government. Their power is marked by the two treasury secretaries who led the fight to legally enable and then reward Wall Street for its obscene excesses. Why wasn't there a CNN stakeout at the homes of former Goldman-execs-turned-treasury-chiefs Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson aimed at finding out how they feel about the almost $7 billion profit that Goldman Sachs made in the last two quarters in the wake of the government's bailout of the firm?
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/scheer