Big Industry Bullshit

via THIS GUY:

Wall Street CEOs like to think they are the adults, the big men in the room, the ones who know how the world works. Well, you know what? They screwed up their own banks, the financial system, and the economy like a bunch of two-year-olds. Every single major bank would have failed in late 2008 without massive government intervention — because of wounds that were entirely self-inflicted. … The financial crisis should have put to rest for a generation the idea that the big boys on Wall Street know what they’re doing and the politicians in Washington are a bunch of amateurs.

Although the situation is a bit different since health insurance companies didn’t actually “fail” (they were quite profitable), they did fail at their job of actually insuring people. Yet they waged a no-holds barred campaign claiming that things would be better this time around if we just left them alone (isn’t that what we were doing?). Same with climate change and big polluters. Same with BP, who, aided by lax regulation, “ignored warning signs” prior to the oil spill but are now launching a lobbying blitz maintaining superiority of their ways.

Even in the wake of systemic failures, we can count on big business to firmly believe that they were right and you are the one being out of line.

Of course they do. Because they can. Because of our inexplicable belief in corporate welfare "small government" and fear that we'll wake up as the CEO of Goldman Sachs along with the baffling idea that the "free market" corporate agenda is somehow on our side. We're offended at the thought of someone in Washington being smarter than ourselves, but for some reason have fetishized the fat cat on Wall Street who is feverishly trying to take your savings account from you.

Same with BP, who, aided by lax regulation

I must say, I'm enjoying the irony of right wing idiots furious at Obama for not stepping in hard and fast enough to take over for BP. I would think they'd be erecting a statue to him: he allowed the absurdly lax regulations (small government at it's best) to continue, and left it in the hands of the private company to fix. They really need to make up their minds with this one.