A Visit To "Some Assembly Required"

Since I've been largely absent for about a week  --  it's time for a visit to "Some assembly Required".  Please follow link, go to the original, and read the rest.  You might also go to the "original original" (follow his link) and read more on the topic.
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 A Quotation: "the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population." Charles Ferguson.

 Tidal Currents: Americans definitely don’t trust banks and the federal government, but do think state and local governments had “about the right” amount of power. Americans have clearly supported higher taxes on the rich and a much more punitive approach to banker compensation. Neither has happened. Americans were not clamoring to fire huge numbers of teachers, police, firemen and health service workers. Republican theologians were.

 Safety Last: Experts now - 30 trillion tons too late - say that injecting toxic crap deep into the earth is not safe and the US industries should never have been allowed to do it. It will damage all of us - but you can be sure not a single company will have to spend a dime in remediation.

 Cow/Cabbage: First US manufacturing comes in with its slowest growth in 11 months, the number of new unemployment claims is essentially stagnant, Mid-Atlantic factory activity hits a 10-month low, and sales of existing houses slip in May. Then the markets have their second worst day of the year, dropping 2% - which gets blamed on poor data from China and Europe plus the Fed's cutting its forecast for the US economy. After the close, Moody's rained on everybody's parade, downgrading 15 of the world's largest banks including BofA, JPMorgan, Citi, and even Goldman Sachs. Morgan Stanley got kicked down to notches. None of this was news nor comes a a great surprise, except to those whiz-kids who run our economy. Friday has no major announcements scheduled, so the day can be spent figuring out what it all means. Yeah, there's a bunch of European data due, but Europe is so over already.


When things go wrong, it is not the leaders or investment bankers who pay...