AN EXERCISE IN THE MECHANICS OF CRONYISM AND THE USEFULNESS OF USEFUL IDIOTS

Crony Capitalism in five easy steps!

Step One:  Warren Buffet, after a conversation with President Obama, loaned Bank of America $5 billion, even though BofA was protesting loudly that they were sound and didn't need a bailout. 

Step Two:  Bank of America makes headlines by deciding to pass on the costs of the Frank-n-Dodd regulations to their account holders (as opponents of the law forecast last summer) in the form of a $5 per month fee for use of debit cards (not including ATM withdrawals).  Rest assured the other banks will be following suit - after BofA takes the heat for them, of course.




Step Three:  Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)  spoke from the Senate floor Tuesday and called for a run on Bank of America in retaliation for the $5 fee - also known as the "Durbin Fee".  He urged people to take their money and put it in a credit union or community bank instead of BofA.  A run on the bank would seal it's fate and Senator Durbin must surely know this.  It was incredibly irresponsible of him to make that speech and it illustrates beautifully how much more interested our politicians are in making sure they aren't held accountable for their actions than they are in the economic health of our nation.

In the meantime, BofA seems no better off, even after Buffett's infusion of cash.  The bank seems to be teetering on the edge of disaster - protestations of sunny prospects from bank officials not withstanding.  The problem is, as one of the only four remaining big banks, BofA has already been determined to be "too big to fail". 

Step Four:  When it gets bailed out - again - Buffett will clean up by dumping his shares on the taxpayer - at a tidy little profit, of course.   And what might he do with some of those profits?

Step Five, of course!

That is what crony capitalism looks like, and it is a direct result of government intruding on the free market and picking winners and losers.  Someone might want to give the useful idiots* twentysomethings 'occupying' Wall Street a heads up.  The corrupt system they are protesting is being headed by the same guy who has been raking in the campaign cash from those eeeeeevil bankers for years.  No wonder they all seem so confused and unable to articulate the point of their protest.   Their blind devotion to liberal orthodoxy and utter antipathy towards anything other than the nuggets of marxist ideology being spoon fed to them by their professors seems to be keeping them from realizing they are being used as shields and distractions to cover the cronyism running rampant in this administration. 

How duped do you think they will feel when they finally discover that the people they believed were going to change the system are in reality the ones most deeply involved in it? 


*The dandy with the scarf looked on the verge of an epiphany until his rigid ideology kicked in and closed his mind to a different point of view.  Ah, well...maybe next time.  I wonder how supportive Harvard Girl will be of big government when the IRS comes a knockin' for her student loans in a few years thanks to the Obama administration nationalizing the student loan industry?