economic meltdown equals power grab for big bank(er)s

I just finished reading an interesting piece over at Alternet by Matt Taibbi. In the article he breaks down the massive bailouts that we have recently been seeing on Wall Street and gives his take on what it all means for us. It's a long damn read, but in my opinion well worth the time. To summarise, we have been ripped off, cheated and scammed. This bailout business wasn't needed to save any banks or insurance providers, it was needed to consolidate power within an already merger happy financial industry. Many small banks are going to be squeezed out of existence and everyone will just have to suffer through with whatever mega bank happens to be left standing. Taibbi also writes about the unbelievable state of regulation that was supposed to be watching AIG and others, it basically didn't exist and was so badly underpowered it never mattered. It's so hard to tell which direction we are headed as a country during all of this, nationalised banks not ran by the government but ran by an asshole oligarchy of snotty wall street scum. Whatever, I just hope they treat us well, since we apparently have no control over the outcome anyway.

Here's the first paragraph of the article.

It's over - we're officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline - a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

That should give you a feel for the article, it's good and a bit pointed and mean spirited as well it should be.