Won't Get Fooled Again

So JP Morgan Chase takes a $2 Billion hit after playing fast and loose with shareholders’ assets, then misrepresents those same losses to investors, and all Chase Chairman Jamie Dimon can offer is a half-assed “oops?”  For years Dimon has been one of the Wall Street elite who rails against increased Federal regulations like the Volcker Rule, arguing that the same regulations his bank seems to routinely skirt are what’s preventing Wall Street from fueling our country’s economic recovery.  People are struggling to pay their mortgages, feed their families, and make ends meet, and guys like Dimon act like fat kids locked in the candy store overnight.  Now we’re to believe that if elected, Mitt Romney will ride into the White House like some kind of modern day Jedi Knight, cutting away even more of those nasty regulations that have supposedly impeded Wall Street’s role in saving America.  Another big business cowboy waving an American flag and talking patriotism while championing that sacred strategy favored by big money guys – the one that involves companies running up debt, cutting jobs, streamlining operations, and then selling off the assets at obscene profits.  Except that Romney and Bain Capital’s legacy was never about creating jobs, unless it’s the jobs Bain created after Romney left.  Even after Wall Street drove our country into the belly of a recession we hadn’t experienced in 75+ years, guys like Dimon, Romney, and Bloomberg in New York act like Wall Street has all the answers to our problems.  Business as usual.

We’ve been told that things are getting better but we know that’s not true.  After three years in the White House, the growth that President Obama and his economists say is occurring is hard to see.  Not with 8% unemployment and gas prices hovering close to $4.00 gallon across the country.  Or with increased homelessness and poverty all around us.  Not when another Iraq or Afghanistan veteran kills himself every 80 minutes – the same soldiers who were sent to fight a war that has drained our country of money that might have been better put to use re-building our infrastructure.  And not when the income gap between the “have’s” and “have not’s” has widened to epic proportions, and so many more people are closer to the bottom than the top.

We were all raised with the belief that if we worked hard we could each live the “American Dream”, but we know that is not true.  Not now.  Not anymore.

And we’re getting very pissed off.