Left I on the News

In September, 2008, I wrote:

I'm increasingly convinced that the events taking place in Washington around the financial "crisis" are a complete charade.

We were told then that the problem was the financial system was "blocked," and that banks weren't lending money, and if they didn't start, the world as we know it would end (or something like that).

It's now a year and a half later. And, as it turns out, lending by the banking industry fell in 2009, the largest annual decline since the 1940's. Did the bottom fall out? No, it did not. Don't get me wrong. We are in the middle of something they've actually had to stop calling a "recession" and start calling a "great recession" (which sounds suspiciously like a "depression"). Actually the government and economists pretend that the "recession" is actually over, which to the rest of us is a complete joke. But the idea that the massive transfers of money to the wealthy was necessary in late 2008 to avoid catastrophe? It was a lie, every bit as much as the "Iraq has WMD" lie.