There has in fact been a not at all hostile takeover of the American governing system. It’s not at all hostile, because it was done quite civilly…men in suits, directing dump trucks full of cash bought and paid for the US Government from the top down.
But that’s not entirely true, it wasn’t dump trucks worth of cash…because there are no dump trucks that are big enough. At levels far beyond the comprehension of most Americans, fiscal policymakers hijacked the treasure of the American people and funneled it all into coffers of private individuals and corporations. The work, the sweat, the blood and the the tears of generations of Americans was the equity that this nation built up and preserved. Our grandparents worked, and they saved, and they went away and died in wars.
In doing so, they amassed a fortune and riches that the world had never before seen. This fortune, amassed over decades, was looted, stolen, ransacked over the course of just a few years, by gangsters wearing suits and shuttling between government offices and the boardrooms of banks and financial institutions.
Geithner and Paulson and Bernake and Dimon…they are gangsters that committed a Coup d’tat of the American treasury. They engaged in a very public and very successful war on the American financial system. They reached into the bank accounts and back pockets and underneath the mattress of every single American. They snuck into the rooms of our children, smashed their piggy banks. They robbed from our children any hope of a financial future.
A war has been raging across this country for many years now…the warfare has been quite public, but the objectives and the operations have been largely covert. Publicly, the financial terrorists tell us that they are fighting for the financial interest…the financial terrorists admit they are stealing our money to, “foam the runways for the banks”. They’re taking our money and blowing it our like confetti so that Wall Street can eat even more….eventually their warfare will come at a horrifying price for all Americans:
When Timothy Geithner orchestrated the bankers’ bailout, giving them a ‘wall of money’ without accountability, and without matching funds for ordinary Americans suddenly facing foreclosure–Geithner took justice out of the American political economy.
Hence the title.
If Geithner’s book “Stress Test” becomes the definitive history of the financial crisis–or even is viewed as a more or less accurate account–then the correct title would be: Geithner and the American Way.
Geithner’ lies throughout his book, as Matt Stoller documented. In his takedown of Stress Test, Stoller partially relies on this groundbreaking work by Josh Rosner in 2010, in which Rosner exposed the Geithner’s long history of serving the biggest bankers.
But if We (the sovereign We) accept Geithner’s false history, the title Geithner and The American Way becomes apt in a snark-free sense too.
Geithner’s accountability-free bailout of the reckless richest while demonizing ‘irresponsible’ homeowners is the current, fragile precedent for how ‘our’ government responds to national crisis. If we believe Geithner’s claims of necessity and right, then the precedent solidifies and defines government policy going forward.