U.S. House to Explore Financial Crisis Prosecutions
March 12th, 2009No, it’s not comedy hour here on Cryptogon…
Somewhere, however, Hank Paulson is laughing his ass off.
Via: Reuters:
The U.S. House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing next week to ask key justice officials and regulators what they need to prosecute wrongdoers in the financial crisis, the chairman of the committee said on Thursday.
Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said he had invited officials from the U.S. Justice Department, the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and all the bank regulators to the hearing.
“I’m not morphing into Joe McCarthy, but I am going to have them tell me what they need for criminal prosecutions and the civil recovery of funds,” Frank told a conference of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
McCarthy was a Republican senator in the 1950s who notoriously accused people of being Communists during the Cold War.
I’m sure they can find the financial world’s equivalent of Pvt. Lynndie England to scapegoat. And won’t THAT make us all feel better…!
And so the lieutenants and less valuable field officers will be sacrificed to the “justice system”, promises of their own cable network slot after they’ve “served” and written their best-selling memoir revealing exactly nothing, secure in their private safe somewhere deep in the bedrock of the Shenandoah valley or their enclave in Paraguay.
Meanwhile, the beast will lumber on, crushing any and all who find themselves — incidentally or intentionally — under its gargantuan footprint.
Solar-powered HK teams will roam the hills of Central Asia, monitored from all angles on high and able to deliver a localized Armageddon to an outlying village with a single radio message.
Bloated admin and support types, whacked-out on formaldehyde loaded diet sodas and psychopharmica, will keep the local Hummers stocked with bio-diesel chowing on their favorite menu of artery-scarring freedom fries prepared in rancid processed fats.
Back in the Emerald City, suits and soldiers alike will keep right on swilling the empire’s flavor of the week; the really hard stuff that clearly demonstrates mass media Kool-Aid for the children’s beverage it truly is.
In the Homeland, those not yet chipped on principle will slowly but surely succumb to the economic pressures leveraged against them, until only the “terrorists” remain — and the mandatory tagging programs begin in earnest under the aegis of safety and order.
Anyone caught with a couple chickens laying away on the roof or under the back stoop will find themselves smashed to economic bits, as food controls and fuel rationing become SOP.
No “crash” will be required for any of this to happen. Quite the contrary. These are but the by-products of maintaining the status quo and the tools by which it will become something fellows like Philip K. Dick saw in their most darkly hallucinatory and hellish opiate-powered visions.
Like Kevin, the only solution with practical applications in my own life as the tenty-first century opened was to find a quiet corner, learn the intricacies of feeding and housing ourselves in a simple, healthy and local manner void of industrial inputs and get to know other local producers and skilled individuals.
And here we sit, fast approaching the end of the first decade and our garden footprint is bigger than the old pile of rocks (c.1751) we call home and the new greenhouse erected last spring has already earned its keep with last years crop of tomatoes, peppers, cukes and other tasty bits.
Like Rebecca, my fairer half is a SCOBY herder and overseer of fermentations wild and not so with no fear of dirt, implements or the root cellar. I just try to keep the place standing and help out in any way I can, which I can do now with confidence as the myriad symptoms of “industrial disease” have fallen away over the last five-plus years away from the rat race.
Meanwhile, the Nuremberg effect will grip the USSA by the throat, gazing deep into the eyes of the mass conscience and repeating those familiar words: “you’re getting sleepy…”