Budowsky on 'Gilded Age Crime'

Brent Budowsky rightly points out that the federal government if quick to bail out banks, hedge funds and private equity deal-makers, but leave average Americans high and dry, in what he terms the "gilded age crime."

Excerpt: 

What has happened during the Bush years, with the Bush ethic of “grab all you can” greed, is the stench of a new Gilded Age that is morally disgraceful, economically unsustainable and politically deadly for Republicans if the Democrats speak clearly against this.

Hillary would probably argue that the wealthy, like special-interest lobbyists, are just plan old Americans who never influence government with their money. Some in Congress will have to interrupt their fundraisers and offend their campaign contributors. For most Democrats, this is the issue of a lifetime, the stuff of which landslides are made of.

Is it right that American troops are told we can’t afford to give them body armor and protected vehicles, so they die preventable deaths, while the highest-income 1 percent receive huge tax cuts?

Is it right that the new racket on Wall Street is that banks make bad loans, sell them to hedge funds and private equity firms, many of whom are virtually unregulated and untaxed, who then complain about their pain after they foreclose on average Americans for falling a little behind their payments?

It is good that today the Fed cut the prime by 50 points, but it is bad, and terribly wrong and unjust, that in the last week the Fed has essentially used Americans’ money to bail out the wealthy who made the profits, while doing zero for the foreclosed and homeless.

When the banks, hedge funds and private equity firms make bad deals, they keep the personal profits, while the corporate profits are protected by bailouts. Meanwhile, when the average Americans in the middle class, or the poor, fall a little behind, they get the boot, they lose their jobs, they are thrown into the street without homes and often without food.

Erin Burnett, the new glamor star at CNBC, says with a sneer that Americans are wrong to believe they have any right to a home.