What the following interview broadcast on PBS with William K. Black on the Bill Moyers Journal show is a real eye-opener. Black was the lead investigator from the 1980's Savings and Loans scandal. The S&L scandal cost the US taxpayer more than US$160 billion and was also sparked by Thatcherite and Reaganomics type deregulation.
 
Black analyzes the causes of the present financial crisis, which, based on numbers, is substantially worse compared to the S&L losses. AIG's losses alone were more than the whole of the S&L crisis according to Black.
 
No one, not even Obama, escapes the pillory in this interview. Black blows the lid off how Washington politics and vested interests work. For example, how is that Obama forced the President of GM to resign, whereas the lead "banksters" (gangsters?) are still in their jobs as the CEO's of major banking institutions? Black assures us that there is no real initiative shown by these crooks/incompetents to dig deeply into their flawed loan portfolios and thereby hang themselves.
 
Black does not touch on the overseas contagion of this US spawned financial crisis, which has bankrupted several nations and forced many to run cap-in-hand, begging to the IMF. The divergence between the performance of Wall Street in the last two months and mounting job losses world wide is also not explored but his analysis is "on the money" when it concerns the "banksters", their bonuses and irresponsible behavior.
 
Black's latest book confirms, "The best way to rob a bank is to own one".

We must all now ask, "why is no one in jail'? It almost smells like the Argentinean "mafiacracia" which helped bankrupt this country just after the turn of the century. The "mafiacracia" was a conspiracy of politicians, lawmakers, judges, lawyers, industrialists, realtors and so on, acting in concert to fleece the state and the Argentinean population. Which they did with aplomb.
 
I see very little difference between this shameful episode in Argentine contemporary history and the robbery pulled off by the Wall Street "banksters", aided by the Rating Agencies. Watch the following PBS interview with William K. Black on the Bill Moyers Journal. I think you will be enlightened as I have been, even if you consider yourself well-informed about the current economic collapse.

- Arturo Rosales
Axis of Logic

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