According to Wikipedia, the phrase “privatizing profits and socializing losses” refers to any instance of speculators benefiting (privately) from profits, but not taking losses, by pushing the losses onto society at large, particularly via the government. I give it an even shorter name. I call it getting Versailled, as in the French royal palace Versailles — the epitome of excess of the French aristocracy in the Courts of Louis XV and XVI during the 18th century. The excesses of the French monarchy caused enough economic pressure on the working classes to instigate what was finally the rise of the violent revolt that would usurp the French aristocracy.
That revolt followed a period of Pluto, the planet of compelling change, in Capricorn, the sign of institutions like government and banking. How apropos then that three years into this current ingress of Pluto into Capricorn, we get to witness the workings of the American and international oligarchy in cahoots with the US government to pocket our tax dollars?
How utterly aristocratic are our modern-day courtiers who preside over the board rooms as masters of the universe, also known as Wall Street executives. Their dealings are portrayed in Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article The Real Housewives of Wall Street, which brings to light the theft of taxpayer dollars, pouring like a “waterfall” into the hands of two of the wives of the very rich, through a TALF (Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility) handout to Wall Street approved during the sunset months of the Bush Administration. Here’s an excerpt:
America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we’re broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year’s retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.
Most Americans know about that budget. What they don’t know is that there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy. After the financial crash of 2008, it grew to monstrous dimensions, as the government attempted to unfreeze the credit markets by handing out trillions to banks and hedge funds. And thanks to a whole galaxy of obscure, acronym-laden bailout programs, it eventually rivaled the “official” budget in size — a huge roaring river of cash flowing out of the Federal Reserve to destinations neither chosen by the president nor reviewed by Congress, but instead handed out by fiat by unelected Fed officials using a seemingly nonsensical and apparently unknowable methodology.
Now, following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the “other” budget. It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure. The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,” says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”
Providing the very rich with financial windfalls from federal subsidies while the government gouges the poor and middle- and working-class taxpayers, through ever-widening diminishment of public services and programs, seems to me the very essence of Versailles. As Taibbi’s article suggests, the greed and manipulation of funds from federal subsidies to rich — also known as crony capitalism — has gone relatively unnoticed. In light of the Tea Bag Congress’s intentions for the federal budget, all the wrong people — children, poor, sick and elderly — are getting shafted with cuts to public education, Medicare and Social Security while the truly criminal get to run off with the check.
For the years 1762-1778 — the last time Pluto was in Capricorn — history records the build-up to the French Revolution caused by the oppression of the peasant and working classes and the first stirrings of the Age of Enlightenment. While Pluto is in Capricorn in this century, Congress and the White House continue to battle over what ‘fat’ to cut in programs like Head Start, public schools and health care. The land of opportunity seems to be opportunity for those few who know the loopholes.
The questions we have to ask our leaders remain on what we hold as values for this country: How can I continue to afford my mortgage? How can I get out from under my student loan? Will the banks foreclose on me? What will happen to the Social Security fund I already paid into while I was working? Will I have to still work when I’m too old? Will there be a good public school in my city for my children? Will my family have enough to eat? Hardly anybody from this Congress seems to be willing to listen to anybody but their corporate masters.
Pluto is in Capricorn and a there’s stellium of planets in Aries — including Uranus, the planet of revolution — acting like a fast moving meat slicer on a heavily fatted piece of pork. Slowly and assuredly, information that was hidden, particularly about government and finance, continues to be revealed like red meat under all that fat. Really, there’s only one question that still needs to be asked, repeatedly and loudly, which is truly appropriate to the age and time we live in. It’s the one Matt Taibbi asks in the leading paragraphs of his article:
“Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”
@liminall–THANKS! Awesome site. I had just been contemplating this morning about exactly WHAT I was going to start knitting, becuase I definitely am not the typical scarf and bootie knitter probably. What a link! Arachne/Spider has also been one of my totems–so, again thanks so much. And there are so many potholes from this awful winter that I crept over this morning in my car that the synchronicity is cute, if nothing else. Cheers ladies. I am open to all the help I can get to keep my knitting on the creative “straight-and-narrow.”
Renegade art knitting!
http://inhabitat.com/juliana-santacruz-herrera-repairs-paris-potholes-with-cheery-renegade-knitting/
Ode to Arachne
Really tempting, though, to want to watch a few heads roll. :>(
And I thank you so much, my ladies, for the pre-knitting lesson. This is probably why it is not until now that I have thought of taking up the craft. :>) Yes–how real Intention is. How cool that Eris is coming into her own in the world of creating positive outcomes and that I am interacting with women of like passion and craziness (take your pick my dear Fe and Sadge, you know who we are), I DO have to be reminded of what my life has taught me to know. So now, help me, what are the intentions we are weaving into our knitted creation? Peaceful, Egyptian type revolution, justice for ALL, everybody in, nobody out of the benefits of the wealth of this country concerning food, shelter, health care and play time? Yeah! I’m seeing it already.
Sadge, what can I say about your offer? Who could turn it down?
Stellium – Burning PRN:
I am actually reminded from a lesson by a wiccan acquaintance that knitting is a form of spellwork where you put your intentions into the garment you’re making.
Harm, as was deFarge’s motivation, is not a good thing to focus intent on, but change, growth and prosperity is. Pick the right color and visualize it into your intentions as you create.
Burning River!!
I’ll teach you how to knit! I taught myself a few years ago in the rainy PacNW!
I love knitting! on Lake Erie, in my 2 person kayak. how about it?
with our polarized shades on of course.
not any of that scary knitting though. I don’t kill people with my knitting. just make cool hats out of organic animal fiber. and I prefer bamboo needles.
I think its too hot in the jungle treehouse for knitting. the snake would get all wound up in the yarn and it would be a mess to sort out-
I know, I know, I’m just a crazy pup. woof!
Absolutely, Madame.
My dearest BPRN:
Are we thinking knitting together like Madame de Farge knitting together? Because if so, we are so on it.
Knitting is a breeze, ya know. Especially when the culprits keep adding up.
Great title. Fe!
I’ve used the term “pre-French Revolution” in conversation over the past 5 years occasionally and was dismissed, of course.
Ken Dychtwald in his book AGE POWER presented the potential for revolution in this country in the early part of this century because of the demographics of the baby boomers and lack of planning by the people who could make a difference.
I had always wondered if the Federal Reserve was crossing its fingers that we really have enough to back the new bills being printed out for each of our “crisises,” wars, and “emergencies.” But what you have presented to us today has gone beyond my wildest imaginations and fears concerning the utter depravity and nefariousness of the oligarchic trolls controlling and exercising power over Americans.
So. They need to do the “perp walk” as Brendan so aptly coined.
Fe, let’s get out our knitting needles and sit together, ok? And, I don’t know how to knit yet, but I AM going to learn. Just for this.
And while I’m learning to knit I will be harassing my friends to speak up (electronically and otherwise) and I will be on the streets wherever an action is occurring with my brothers and sisters in solidarity. Wisconsin, Florida, Washington DC were on Rachel Maddow’s show last night, saying—hear us. We have figured out what you are doing—and we are pissed..
Sounds like one of the smoking guns has been found. Now…what else haven’t we seen yet?
Thanks Fe! Very interesting information, and I do indeed hope something is done with it at long last.
Wall Street is the perp, now they need to do the perp walk.
This is from our friend Nancy Sommers at Starlight News:
“Astrologically, there is a reason why Americans have been especially susceptible to being manipulated in the past year. Neptune, the planet of self-deception and illusion was conjunct the US Moon (27Aquairus12) and sesquiquadrate the US Sun (13Cancer19) from February 2010 through mid-February 2011. This combination intensified the gullibility of Americans and made them more prone to being deceived and to having heightened emotional reactions rather than a grounded rationality.
It has been noteworthy that in the past few months, since these transits have receded, Americans have seemed more able to discern fact from fiction despite the usual hyperbole and deception from politicians. Those participating in the popular protest movement in Wisconsin, for example, have proven to be very clear about what is happening with their state government and what the stakes are. Americans have also become acutely aware of the meaning of the Medicare-thrashing Paul Ryan budget bill, as evidenced by the angry town-hall meetings that GOP congressmen have been enduring recently.”
Whole article can be found here.
Great article Fe. You nailed it.
“Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”
Because (to paraphrase a Dem congressman) they own the place.
Always have, always will. I have no doubt that PL in Capricorn combined with UR in Aries with a sprinkling of CHI/NEP in Pisces, that will change the shape of things.
Apropos of Carrie, it’s one thing to reveal information, it’s another thing to do something about the thing revealed. My generation, born at the tail end of 1962, would potentially get SLAMMED by the Ryan Debacle. “Vouchers R Us” really won’t cut it. For those of us who’ve been unemployed for a long time, we’ll never get the time to recoup whatever we would have gotten. We can’t work until we die; there just won’t be the jobs to do so. As for the beer and reality shows running out, well, if it’s not one drug, it’s another.
On the other hand, if enough of us either lose our homes to highly illegal foreclosures (as per the 60 MINUTES episode) or have to move in with 6 other roommates our your 50’s, not having cable tv maybe a foregone conclusion.
I have to run right now, but can’t wait to get back and read this, Fe.
Carrie:
Does anybody know that Ben Bernanke gave a press conference today? The first of its kind in a long time. But, it seems that the revelation of the President’s birth certificate was far more important to the network news.
I hope that answers your question.
“Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”
One more question; why isn’t Congress, who aids and abets these crooks, in jail?
When will “we the people” rise up and peacefully end this tyranny? Maybe when the beer runs out or the cable TV is gone (and they can’t watch their favorite drug, the reality shows).