Is Wall Street or Washington Out of Control?

It is about 9:30 Sunday night as I write this post.  A hot night for sure here in Philadelphia in mid September. I am going over my feeds to find some stories that really piss me off, and I just can’t believe what I am reading. I mean, how effing bad has it gotten on Wall Street? Here are a few of the happy go friggin’ lucky headlines from this weekend’s news:

• Wall Street on alert: Lehman endgame
• WaMu on the block?
• AIG in freefall
• More layoffs seen at Lehman
• Should Bank of America save Lehman?
• Fidelity nears settlement
• Washington Mutual tries to soothe anxiety
• August foreclosures hit another record high
• US Bails Out Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Here is the 64 billion dollar question….

Who is supposed to be watching over this financial mess and how the hell did it get so bad? I am asking but not asking if you know what I mean. I know the domino effect the sub-prime mess started, but this goes beyond a single company or industry getting into trouble, this is financial pandemic that doesn’t seem to be controllable.

Washington keeps throwing money at the problem…our money, which is only going to wind up being a down payment. It’s a stop gap until Bush can beat a path out of town and leave it in the hands of the next sucker, ah, I mean President. But I want to know, who in Washington is supposed to be the guardian? To make sure we don’t have instances like this? We know it’s not the Fed Chair; he is a friggin’ hall monitor at best. This leads me to the next headline i read:

Greenspan: Economy in ‘once-in-a-century’ crisis

Like that one? This guy has more to do with this “once in a century” crisis than anyone. He was the hall monitor while all the bad boys on Wall Street were smoking in the boy’s room. Now, every three months or so, he sticks his head of the ground like a groundhog looking for his shadow to see if there is six more weeks of crappy economic news.

So, it is without hesitation that I  ask you, who do you think is most responsible for the economic meltdown? Is it:

1. Bush
2. Bernanke
3. Greenspan
4. Wall Street
5. Big Oil
6. Consumers
7. All of the above

I ask because I am looking for someone to blame. I want a head on a stake. I am the mob with pitchforks seeking Frankenstein’s monster. I want my pound of flesh. If for no other reason than this passage taken from one the three most important documents in our nation’s history:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.

It is their right; it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

For those of you forgetting 5th grade American history, that’s a little document known as the Declaration of Independence and the two passages you just read require us as a nation to act, you are compelled by Congress to cast off the shackles of despotism and start anew. Because if we don’t learn from our past, we are doomed to repeat it. Think I am kidding? Here is the last headline I read this weekend:

The IRA loophole you don’t want to miss