John's Blog

Wall Street is mad as hell and they refuse to be abused by what the Republicans refer to as "the losers." In their parlance "the losers" are not the failed banksters and insurance companies and CEOs but their victims, ordinary working families. Last night John Stewart took a look at how Santelli's network, CNBC, mislead its viewers so badly than anyone who would have taken them seriously and followed their advice would absolutely be in need of a bailout. It's an eight-and-half minute study on how the business press acted as cheerleaders while the financial system melted down. It is completely worth watching.

And it dovetails nicely with a disturbing report in this morning's NY Times: "More than a dozen Wall Street trading firms systematically cheated their customers of millions of dollars by improperly slicing bits of profit from countless trades, federal regulators said on Wednesday."

In China they would have been sentenced to death for this kind of fraud-- and then pardoned-- but here they got a $69 million fine-- without even having to admit guilt! This could never have happened had not Bush, the Republicans and the Blue Dog type Democrats they are allied with not systematically wrecked the regulatory system meant to protect society from greed-obsessed amoral predators. (I hope you read our report on the nexus between Wall Street and Washington earlier today.) Anyway, John Stewart... take it away: