The Usury Crisis: Two Must See News Segments

Usury (noun) The practice of lending money and charging the borrower interest, especially at an exorbitant or illegally high rate.

Yes, we used to have laws against those kinds of practices. To understand the enormous political shifts taking place you really need to get back to a roots word like usury. It's really just another way of saying that someone was conned by a financial transaction the complexity of which was too much for them to fully grasp.

In truth, and I've said it before, the whole monetary system is a con of exactly that kind - a con that is too complex for most people to fully understand. This failure to understand the financial landscape also means that people are equally unable to meaningfully manage their own positions in relation to their surroundings. They just don't get it and our financial institutions don't want them to understand it too well anyway.

No one's going to bail you out of a financial crisis. Hell, they are trying to make a proper bankruptcy damned near impossible for an individual. But if you are a corporation or another kind of favored business, then no problem - you might not only get your bankruptcy but even a bail out that makes a bankruptcy unnecessary.

Welcome to the financial crisis of 2008!

Is your name Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae? Then we don't care how much you screwed up, we have taxpayer money for you. Do you find the cushion comfortable enough? We got taxpayer monies on tap! You keep risking it and we'll keep bailing you out...

This makes people in Japan, China, England and all over Europe very happy.

And Obama will not save you. He's too busy contemplating the "moral hazard" represented by the people that accepted the loans instead of scrutinizing the overweening greed on the part of the lenders that made the loans in the first place. Obama is willing to bail out the corporations but not you lowly individuals - nope, not gonna happen. You see, those corporations and financial institutions pay him to cover their asses but you aren't worth shit to Obama.

Bill Moyers Journal: Mortgage Mess, William Greider, Justice and the American Dream
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07182008/watch.html

Democracy Now: Naomi Klein Reexamines “The Shock Doctrine”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/15/with_crises_in_fuel_food_housing