Forget jailing Wall Street's dictators. It's naïve and too late. We missed that opportunity. But a revolution will do the trick, giving us a second chance to jail the bastards. Until then, remember: The following four factors are building to a head, merging into a critical mass that will accelerate into a revolution and destroy Wall Street from within.

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As Paul B. Farrell says in a recent column, it's too late to jail bankster CEOs;   only a revolution could accomplish that.

"Put Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in jail for six months, and all this will stop," a former congressional aide tells Matt Taibbi in his latest Rolling Stone attack, "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?   Financial crooks brought down the world's economy -- but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them."

Taibbi's right in one respect:   everyone knows Wall Street's run by a bunch of dictators who are doing more damage to democracy and capitalism than North Africa's dictators.   But jail the CEOs of Goldman, Citi, B of A or Morgan Stanley?   It's too late for that.  

Only a revolution will stop Wall Street's self-destructive form of capitalism  

During the S&L crisis two decades ago America had a backbone, indicted 3,800 executives and bankers, and put a thousand of them behind bars.   But today's leaders don't have the backbone to do something like that.   Besides, jail time for them won't take away the darkness consuming Wall Street's soul.   In addition, most Americans today are still politically asleep, in denial about the moral crisis facing America.   Only a revolution will wake them up.

Jail time for banksters?   Journalists have been beating that dead horse for three years.   Yes, jailing a few CEOs made sense, in early 2009.   But our still-wet-behind-the-ears president missed that opportunity, and for safety's sake surrounded himself with Wall Street insiders, just as Bush did with Blankfein's predecessor and others like him.  

Taibbi got it right in one respect:   Washington's error was in protecting Wall Street's billion-dollar crooks when it should have been prosecuting them for their criminal role in getting us into the 2008 mess.   But today the political statute-of-limitations has run out.   The jail solution is wishful thinking, like praying to the tooth fairy for a miracle.   Now is the time for a revolution, beginning on Wall Street.  

Jail Wall Street?   Old news.   They got away with it.   Obama chickened out.   End of story.

"Jail Bank CEOs" makes a great sound bite in the cable pundits' echo chamber.   Of course you remember Taibbi's unforgettable indictment of Goldman Sachs:   the "world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

But so what?   Just three years after Wall Street's crooks brought down the world's economy, Goldman's Blankfein and his Wall Street partners in crime are using their bailout money to pay record bonuses, laughing at us chumps as they do so.  

Since the 2008 meltdown, magazines and newspapers have analyzed the 2008 crash to death.   It really is old news -- history.   Journalists churned out book after book: "Greenspan's Bubbles," "House of Cards," "Trillion Dollar Meltdown," "13 Bankers," "Dumb Money," "Bailout Nation," "All the Devils Are Here," "The Big Short," "Too Big to Fail," "The Failure of Capitalism," "This Time is Different," "And Then the Roof Caved In," on and on, ad nauseum.   All talk, no action, and no effect.   And with every book, every editorial, every expose over the past three years, Wall Street banksters actually grew stronger, got richer, more arrogant, bolder on bonuses, impervious to attacks, even taunting us (like the dictators Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gadhafi), confident they could do no wrong, confident no one would rebel.   Jail for banksters?   Our moment to act is long past.   

Wall Street is the "Comeback Kid" story of the 21st century.   Three short years ago, Wall Street was virtually bankrupt, a ward of the state.   If only we could have jailed "just one" of them back then, when they were down for the count.   But instead we bailed them out!   Made them richer.   Gave them $14 trillion in the form of loans, credits, cash, and asset buyouts.   Essentially we gave them the keys to the Treasury.   So they didn't just recover, they're now "running the tables," to use a Las Vegas metaphor.   They own the place, as Senator Durbin said.   So let's admit the truth, let's understand the new reality:   Wall Street dictators have absolute power;   they rule Washington, America, and you and me.  

Yes America's bankrupt, and the rich don't care

Admit it, we lost the opportunity to save our democracy from them.   Jail a bank CEO and Wall Street will miraculously reform?   You must be joking.   Wall Street got away with the biggest (and apparently "legal") bank heist of all times.   And today the should-be/would-be inmates are running not just the prison but the country.  

Wall Street's corrupt banksters have lost their moral compass -- their insatiable greed has become a deadly virus destroying its host (nation) -- their campaign billions buy senate votes, stop regulators' actions, and manipulate presidential decisions.   Wall Street money controls voters, runs America, and both parties.   And yes, Wall Street is bankrupting the country at the same time.  

Wake up America, and listen to what these economists are saying:

"Our country is bankrupt.   It's not bankrupt in 30 years or five years," warns economist Larry Kotlikoff, "it's bankrupt today."

Economist Peter Morici:   "Capitalism is broken, America's government is two bankrupt political parties bankrupting the country."

David Stockman, Reagan's budget director:   "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians" the "tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing."

BusinessWeek recently asked analyst Mary Meeker to run the numbers.   How bad is it?   America really is bankrupt, with a "net worth of a negative $44 trillion."   Bankrupt.  

And it will get worse.   Unfortunately, nothing can stop America's self-destructive Wall Street bankers.   They simply do not care that their "doomsday capitalism" will ultimately destroy their businesses from within, as it simultaneously bankrupts their country and ends democracy as we know it.  

America's worst 10 years start now

The rich exist in a different world from the rest of us.   They live privileged lives in gated communities.   They meet for holidays at the world's elite resorts.   The richest aren't worried about today's economy like you and I are.   They don't need to be worried.   Their issues revolve around which elite resort has the best masseuse, best Pilates teacher, best concierge medical doctor, which private school to choose, what investments they are making at this time, etc.   Folks at the top are not concerned with the underlying deterioration of America, except in the abstract, because they aren't and won't be directly affected by it (barring something quite unforeseen) -- at least not in any significant or worrisome way.   That's why no amount of new information will ever change what they do.   To them, such news is irrelevant.   When things for the rest of us totally fall apart, they will simply pick up the pieces, at bargain prices, just as they did after the Great Depression, put it all back together the way they want, likely with even more power and control for themselves, and carry on as before.   At least that's their plan.

The four ticking time bombs that will ignite the Wall Street revolution, according to MarketWatch analyst Paul B. Farrell

Yes, the rich live in a different world.   And no new information will change them.   But a revolution would.   Revolutions build slowly over a long time.   Then, suddenly, a critical mass, a flash point, and something totally unexpected ignites the ticking bombs.  

As you know, it happened recently in a remote Tunisian village.   Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old college graduate, unable to pay bribes, set himself on fire to protest police confiscation of the scale he used at his unlicensed vegetable cart.   That triggered a revolution.   And his horrible suicide rapidly led to the collapse of a 24-year dictatorship.  

Today we have four time bombs soon to make history;   any one of them could easily start ramping up the revolution that's already killing Wall Street and America from within.  

1.   Wealth gap:   the super-rich, the class war, and the death of democracy

The gap:   In the space of one generation, America's wealthiest 1% have almost tripled their share of our country's income, from 9% of it to more than 23% of it.   Meanwhile, middle-class income has stagnated.   Even Warren Buffett admits that "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making the war, and winning it."

The rich just don't care about the losses the large majority of us are taking as a result.   They live by a very self-centered credo and are lacking a moral compass.   The public welfare is honored by them only if there are tax benefits in it for them.  

The wealth gap continues to widen, no steps are being taken to stop that widening, and soon enough something unpredictable will ignite a Wall Street revolution because of this ever widening gap.  

2.   Wall Street's doomsday capitalism and its movement toward anarchy

A key Supreme Court decision accelerated and codified Wall Street's ability to use billions stolen from taxpayers to lobby Washington and solidify its (Wall Street's) power, all for its own self-interest -- through campaign payola, senators' votes, presidential access, manipulation of regulators, grabbing tax benefits, etc.  

You say you can't believe any of this is true?   Democracy is essentially may well be on its death bed because people like you are in denial and are informationally in the dark.   Wall Street CEOs and Forbes 400 billionaires are either engaged in a secret conspiracy to make themselves still richer, or are unwittingly and absentmindedly pushing us towards anarchy, oblivious to the fact they are helping to set up the necessity of the world's next revolution.  

3.   Pentagon's perpetual war machine vs. America's budget time bomb

 With ever more of our population over the age of 65, and ever reduced wages for many among us, our growing Social Security and Medicare costs often seem insurmountable, but now add to that the war-making tendencies of America's ruling elite, which is fueled by:

• China's military actions,
• the insatiable profit-seeking expansion of our military industrial complex, and
• a Pentagon prediction that global population growth is putting ever more dangerous pressure on the world's scarce resources.  

 

Thus will increase the wars around the world, and thereby demand for ever more war spending, thus increasing the risk of sudden revolutions everywhere, including at home.  

4.   Global population explosion vs. resources, jobs, and better lifestyles

As the world population explodes from 7 billion to 10 billion in the next generation, the demand for more jobs (with ever fewer workers being needed) and the pressure on scarce resources will increase.   .   Also increasing will be the frustration and burning envy of the have-nots, thereby making the world all around Wall Street a burning powder keg, further setting things up for the revolution.  

Summing up  

Forget jailing Wall Street's dictators.   It's naïve and too late.   We missed that opportunity.   But a revolution will do the trick, giving us a second chance to jail the bastards.  

Until then, remember:   The following four factors are building to a head, merging into a critical mass that will accelerate into a revolution and destroy Wall Street from within:  

1. The widening wealth gap,
2. capitalism's drift towards anarchy,
3. the ever higher cost of feeding the Pentagon's costly war machine,
4. the huge global population explosion.

 

Authors Bio:

Several years after receiving my M.A. in social science (interdisciplinary studies) I was an instructor at S.F. State University for a year, but then went back to designing automated machinery, and then tech writing, in Silicon Valley. I've always been more interested in political economics and what's going on behind the scenes in politics, than in mechanical engineering, and because of that I've rarely worked more than 8 months a year, devoting much of the rest of the year to reading and writing about that which interests me most.