Worst mess in history?

As good as I think Obama is, he inherited the biggest mess in our history. I've been doing some reading lately to figure out just how bad our economic woes are and trying to employ some strategy that might help in these the worst of times. If you want to retain your optimism that America and possibly the entire Western world won't crash into the brink, don't read the April 2 issue of Rolling Stone, The Big Takeover, by Matt Taibbi in which he explains so well what really happened to our economy and who precisely is responsible. What is scarey is that this wasn't so much a perfect storm of innocent decisions and unforeseeable disasters that percipitated the present crisis, but a systematic takeover of our economy by Wall Street insiders with the full acquiesence of our so-called government regulators (many whom are themselves from the Street).

To quote a few pithy paragraphs from Taibbi's informative article that really lays it all out:

It's over -- we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step to far.

It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline -- a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British empire.

He goes on to explain that AIG lost $27 million dollars every hour or $465,000 a minute, or $7,750 a second. And that's only AIG.

And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).

So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidy. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial--we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American dream.

Turns out the man most responsible for hitching everyone's star to AIG -- the Patient Zero of the global economic meltdown--was Joseph Cassano who used the instruments of our destruction, most especially credit-default swaps (CDS)in a massive gambling scheme that bet other people's money to return massive amounts of money to his own bank account and who has walked away from the mess with $280 million in earnings and is now holed away in his lavish penthouse in London.

As Taibbi at the conclusion of his article writes,

The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged they talk about how hard they work...
No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?

If you are still interested in reading more about the present mess and a few of the people behind it and other Ponzi schemes for even more sleepless nights, I would recommend picking up the latest edition of Vanity Fair (April 2009) too and read several more articles on the subject of greed, stupidity and our failed system:

Over the Hedge, by Bethan McLean
Gating has given rise to the worst fears--that hedge funds are a roach hotel.

Greenwich Mean Time, by Vicky Ward

Madoff's World, by Mark Seal

Rethinking the American Dream, by David Kamp