By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
It’s been a week when the difference between reality and the distorted worldview of various political camps has created a murky potion of chaos and confusion. It brings to mind Macbeth’s witches, chanting over their dark recipe while incanting, “Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble.”
Yes, there’s burning and bubbling in the Empire, and a nasty little brew of circumstance to offer up to the gods as we anticipate a mutable Solar eclipse at zero degrees Gemini this Sunday. What’s that cooking in the pot, you wonder? Old fears, dashed hopes, a handful of determination, a pinch of defiance. I suspect there’s some eye of newt in there as well, and other things that have gone missing, like honest debate, journalistic ethics and perhaps even the 4+ billion bucks J.P. Morgan Chase’s Jaime Dimon lost in another fit of hubristic Wall Street dice throwing.
Either those who most egregiously push the envelop have shown their hand in the last few weeks, or we’re getting better at noticing; perhaps both. Who can argue that, as consumer advocate and senatorial hopeful Elizabeth Warren quickly pointed out, this Morgan-Chase incident proves why banks can no longer be trusted to police themselves? In a hastily convened board of directors meeting, 60% of J.P. MC gave Dimon a vote of continued confidence, something the shareholders later rejected but to no avail. Tim Geithner, representing the government, used financial-speak to send a clear message to Dimon that he should step down from the Board of the New York Fed, a declaration considered by economists to be a direct strike at Wall Street.
This appears to be a warning shot across Wall Street’s bow from the Obama administration. The winner of such a struggle, representing the Wall Street vs. Main Street dialogues and illustrative of what the president calls “a clear choice” in governance, is anybody’s guess. The banksters still live, breath and behave as if nothing went wrong in the first place. This is essentially the philosophical smack down between commonwealth and corporate power, starkly outlined between Obama’s followers and Romney’s, although the particulars are more nuanced. The Pubs don’t have to pick a side — they ARE the corporate party — but the Dems must once again pit their better instincts to serve the public interest against the ever-present cronyism that offers them lobbying money to fund a vicious re-election cycle.