Person of the Year

DougJ summed this up just about perfectly:

I have nothing special against Bernanke. I think he probably deserves credit for averting financial catastrophe.

But this is a pretty strong signal that elite media still worships the architects of our awesome financial system. Some things never change.

Though, ...given the alternative...

Reading Assignment: Get Mad

Matt Taibbi's The Big Takeover.

If yesterday's assignment was a punch in the gut—knocking the wind out of you while you contemplate how screwed we are—then Taibbi's article is like a drink in the face and a finger in the chest...

It's fucking go time.

The people on Wall Street should give thanks that New Yorkers have no reason to own pitchforks. This makes me want to abandon any pretense of a bailout or rescue and burn the whole fucking thing down and sort through the ashes—no matter the cost. I'm now of the opinion we have nothing to lose. We're going down either way, I want some bankers to land on. And Joe Cassano and Phil Gramm's heads on pikes.

Reading Assignment

The best (and worst*) thing I've read on the economic collapse and the failure to do anything about it that will actually work.

No Return to Normal

Why the economic crisis, and its solution,
are bigger than you think.

By James K. Galbraith

In short: There's a way out, but the way things are going now, we're fucked. This is worse than the Great Depression, because nobody is proposing anywhere close to a bold enough plan to fix the public sector and get things going, and there won't be WWII to carry it through. Even with all that working, it still took twenty years to rebuild the economy. These days, between the A.D.D.-media, the next-cycle-only politicians and the panic-or-party jackasses on Wall Street, that will never suffice. Even if Obama took the steps necessary (and nothing indicates he can or will), he will pay too heavy a price for it, control will change hands in 2012 0r even 2016, and any progress he starts will be immediately undone.

The only thing that will make me feel any comfort would be for Obama to fire his current crew of in-over-their-heads insiders and replace them with guys like Galbraith, Krugman Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb, and let them get to some real work.

That doesn't seem likely.

Not Getting It

Can somebody sit Obama down and make him watch this CNBC segment? And then have him shitcan Geithner and everyone else and hire these guys?

And by "these guys" I don't mean the roundtable of wisecracking retards asking for stock tips. I mean the two smartest financial guys on the face of the planet. The two guys who had this shit figured out years ago. The two guys nobody seems to be listening to.

Josh Marshall summed it up perfectly:

These two guys are talking about a deep structural crisis in the world economy. And these CNBC yahoos can't stop asking for stock tips. Really surreal. [...] This is a seminal piece of video. You have to see it. I'm not sure I've seen anything that captures -- albeit unintentionally -- the vast disconnect over what is happening today in the US economy.

[h/t Angelos]