Posted on: July 20, 2009 at 1:30 pm

HOW FAST WILL WALL STREET BE RETURNING TO PRE-1982?
World Affairs Monthly

http://worldaffairsmonthly.com/printfriendlybyid.php?id=1259

If you are willing to scour through the facts and events of the past several years, if you are more inclined to honesty than dishonesty, then you might pick up a copy of Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy (John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey). The author is Barry Ritholtz (with Aaron Task), and we will have to admit that they have made a serious effort at cataloguing, meticulously cataloguing, what has been happening on Wall Street. They try to be pretty honest and blunt, and by and large they are. I know that Nouriel Roubini is a crank, so I admit I was put off by his prominent endorsement of the book. But Bill Fleckenstein writes the Foreword, so I was impressed. Fleckenstein is a good guy, and a very serious and honest professional. Ritholtz’s book is a realistic appraisal of the true state of affairs: we are indeed getting bailed out, but the elite Wall Street cabal is getting 99% of this bailout.

Wall Street fraud has gone mainstream – just as it went mainstream in the 1920s. Nothing much changes, except the actors. This time around, the media was and is a major player in the scam. What is amazing is that scammers, in the media, in the Federal Reserve, on Wall Street, dominate the events and the crimes. There are days when I just cannot control my laughter. Things have gotten very much out of control in the United States. “Capitalism” is getting exploited for all its worth. Ritholtz tells the story. Ritholtz is a hard worker, he is diligent, and I commend his efforts to tell the truth.

I recently called up (for the second time) Ritholtz to see if he would discuss his book and Wall Street. In 2006 or so Ritholtz understood that something serious was coming – he then turned bearish. His instincts are sound and impressive. He likes to tell the truth, and he is a likeable guy, and moreover he is the author of a popular financial blog called The Big Picture.

Most people are naïve and stupid, so this makes the scamming pretty easy. The Ritholtz book is, as I have said, a pretty good catalogue of the scamming operations. Thank goodness for the internet. Without the internet, the scammers would be enjoying impunity.