The goal is to protect the financial monopoly owned by Wall St, at - literally - almost any cost.
Geitner and the Big Six banks should comprise the subjects of the first great auto da fe of the clean-up. Then they need to create a significant investigatory and prosecutorial entity to go after all of the miscreants, down to the level of the office managers of mortgage broker offices and the vice presidents of banks that originated and then sold sub-prime and option ARMs in L.A., Miami, Las Vegas, etc. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
If states are already considering going their own way now, what happens a year from now when there's even less money to go around at street level, unemployment is even higher, and there are no obvious prospects for improvement?
There's a point where the cancerous bloat eats the victim to the point where both die. Wall St is a tick which has just popped. Trying to put the flying body parts back together again doesn't seem like a useful pastime.
I'm more interested in what happens next, and how long it's going to take.
It's all about show trials... Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
