Bush, Cheney and the conservatives caused the economic crisis and general Wall Street corruption

Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw two shoes at George Bush to remind everyone that Bush and his minions are directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. They are also the reason that there are 4 million refugees spread around the Middle East. Eric Margolis points out what else Bush, Cheney and the conservatives are responsible for.

While al-Zaidi was being beaten in prison for his courageous act, off in New York, the fabled financial guru, Bernie Madoff, was accused of bilking clients of an astounding $50 billion while well-fed watchdogs of the Securities and Exchange Commission slept.

Thanks to Madoff and other Wall Street bandits, tens of millions of Americans have lost their life savings and retirement funds, and the word financial system is on the rocks. The storm they created has blown as far east as the Gulf and South Asia.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney were obsessed by al-Qaida, searching under every rock in Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden, the real danger to America was at home – on Wall Street. The same bin Laden who pointed out a decade ago that America’s economy, its Achilles Heel, would one day collapse.

Wall Street’s financial con men, hedge fund nabobs, and casino capitalists took home a staggering US $33.3 billion of bonuses in 2007 alone thanks to shady financial engineering and peddling fraudulent securities. So far, they have escaped prosecution and get to keep their millions and $30 million South Hampton beach houses. That these fraudsters go unpunished, and get to keep their swag, is unconscionable. [Snip]

The US national debt is twice America’s net worth.

Government and business encouraged a reckless credit binge to which the nation became addicted. Manufacturing fell to only 12% of GDP. Finance – the shuffling of paper – became America’s leading industry, at almost 25% of GDP. Americans saved nothing and had to borrow $1.2 trillion from China and Japan to keep their orgy of consumerism going.

Washington’s response to the financial crisis was panic, then flooding the economy with freshly-printed money in hope something positive would happen. Japan made precisely the same gamble when its bubble economy collapsed in the early 1990’s. Today, Japan has one of the world’s highest deficits and its economy remains stagnant.

Wall Street used the political conservatives to remove government supervision, then they converted the economy into a banker's paradise where bank loans were used for the consumption purchases needed to pump up the economy while their merger-happy parasites shifted real production off-shore to third world countries where they didn't have to share profits with the workers who actually produce the goods the economy has consumed.

The executives of large American companies were bought off with extravagant salaries and bonuses as they consolidated, merged and drove their companies into the ground. Here's Eric Margolis' description of what the car companies have been doing:

Worse is coming. Chrysler and Ford will shut plants in January. GM is next. In spite of the $ 13.4 billion auto industry bailout announced by President Bush last week, many plants may never reopen. Even the mighty Toyota just announced its first-ever loss.

The staggering US auto industry closely resembles the old Soviet Union: economically declining, bereft of new ideas, producing unwanted products, run by dimwitted careerist bureaucrats.

America produces the wrong cars, and far too many. The bloated auto industry must downsize. It has been selling cars only thanks to the steroid of cheap, easy credit – in effect, almost giving them away. Now that the drug is largely cut off, sales have nosedived.

The US economy has been running almost entirely on credit for a decade.

When MBA's, Economists and Lawyers run the economy and it is hard to find students who want to work hard enough to learn the relatively poorly paid jobs of engineers, the economy is being driven into the ground. But that's what Conservatives and Libertarians have been doing since Reagan was elected President.

It'll happen every time conservatives and bankers take control of the economy. The current economic crisis is just the chickens coming home to roost.