Let me see if I've got this right.
Wall Street goes on a drunken binge from 2001 to the crash in 2008. The Street is spurred by the removal of most regulations and by the creation of new financial devices like derivatives and credit default swaps. One hedge fund manager, a derivatives specialist, estimates that about two percent of the Street people who use derivatives really understand them. But no difference. You can use these devices and others like them to roll over deals like sub prime mortgages and sell them to the next customer -- and you take a big bonus as soon as the deals are made. The whole Ponzi-like scheme collapses in 2008. Some 8.5 million jobs are lost in 2008 and 2009 alone and several million people lose their homes. But the feds come to the rescue with a $700 billion payout in 2008, no strings attached. Wall Street recovers and in 2009 is again giving billions in bonuses. Now here's where it gets confusing ... President Obama wants some Wall Street reform. Nothing extreme, just a process to avoid having banks default and cause a national recession again. The banks don't want this because it might slow down their gambling and they might not make as much money. The Republicans don't want it because the banks don't want it and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell want the banks to finance their return to power. So the Street and the Republicans create a new story. It goes as follows: You know this massive inequality that has come to America, like 1% of the population in 2009 making 23.5% of the earnings, or the fact that the median family income has gone down 5% from 1999 to 2009, or the fact that Wall Street now feels perfectly safe in gambling as much as they want because they know the government -- read tax dollars -- will rescue them? Well, none of that is the fault of Wall Street or the Republicans who have been in power and promoted the policies that led to this stuff. It's all Obama's fault -- you know the guy with the funny name and the Kenyan anti-colonialist world view. Yeah, it's all Obama's fault.
Now I've finally got it.
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