from http://buzzflash.com/articles/node/7894
By Mark Karlin
Ronald Reagan's evocation of the infamous and racially charged fictional image of a welfare mom driving a Cadillac doesn't hold a candle to the welfare CEOs of Wall Street -- still living the lavish lifestyles of Robin Leach's "Rich and Famous."
Rick Santelli's now famous stunt denouncing government intervention to stem the tide of foreclosures because taxpayers would allegedly be helping to bail out people who "knowingly" took risks is based on a flawed premise and completely overlooks the role of the moneyed class predatory loan industry.
But what isn't debatable -- even remotely -- is that all the so-called "socialist welfare" given out to help poor moms and their kids eat and stay alive doesn't hold a candle to what may be $2 trillion in welfare to Wall Street riverboat gamblers who took risks amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars and lost at the casino. In Santelli's eyes, apparently, welfare for people who travel in a chauffeured limo is a duty of the taxpayer because the super rich deserve to have their vassals tithed to subsidize the risk taking of the wealthy.
The Wall Street economic implosion is due to many things, but, as Jon Stewart so devastatingly pointed out, it primarily came as a result of accumulated gambling debts. Wall Street companies didn't play with poker chips: they doubled down again and again with the games of chance produced by deregulation such as derivatives and default swaps (not to mention the hedge fund industry, among others).
Wall Street's complete meltdown -- which we learned about suddenly over one weekend that produced a $700 billion welfare bill (followed by more) -- wasn't exposed in advance by the mainstream corporate press, because they are part of the moneyed class that loves to take risks and live lavish styles at the public's expense.
Essentially, if you are wealthy enough and are a higher up at a Wall Street financial firm (they are not really banks anymore; they are financial-gambling companies that include banking to finance their gambling addiction) you know that the U.S. governnment will bail you out with welfare for the rich.
Poor welfare recipients -- who were dramatically downsized as a result of "welfare reform" in 1996 -- never took our hard-earned money and wagered it in a game of roulette, but the Wall Street "free market" freeloaders did: to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
What happened on Wall Street was not due to poor people over reaching; it was the result of super-rich people gambling with the fate of our economy (as allowed by the systematic "Reagan Revolution" de-regulation), losing it all (as the mainstream financial media -- particularly television -- cheered them on), and then asking for hundreds of billions of dollars in limousine welfare.
There was nothing free about the Republican "free market" mantra of cutting taxes and letting our financial industry run loose with our hard-earned money. These "masters of the universe" in the financial industry got enormous tax cuts, deregulation, multiple homes, servants, mistresses and the like -- and we got the privilege of picking up the highest welfare check in history due to their failure at the gaming tables.
Socialism for the Wall Street barons and a "free market" mugging for the rest of us.
They picked our pockets clean.
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