WHITE COLAR CRIME IS A FELONY

There is a rumor going around that some Americans are actually coming out of their long-term hibernation. It has even been suggested that a handful of these formerly comatose citizens are awakening with a certain displeasure.

Apparently, their imploding home values, pension funds, stock accounts and 401Ks are beginning to get on their nerves. And---you better sit down for this one---a few have even connected the dots of the conspiracy that has brought them down to where they find themselves today.

There is a silent anger rising up in this land of ours. It is directed at the politicians who allowed Wall Street to operate without regulation, the Federal Reserve, whose absurdly low interest rates invited everyone to the party, the banker terrorists who leveraged other people's money 30 to 1 in complex unregulated derivatives for which they received obscene fees, the rating agencies who blessed these toxic assets with their AAA approval and the SEC which, though repeatedly warned about what was happening, looked the other way.

The long-sleeping electorate is slowly coming to the delayed conclusion that conspiracy capitalism has been separating them from their money, their dreams, their retirement and their childen's future. As the flow of funds move ever faster from the many to the few, the middle class is being hijacked, outsourced to oblivion.

The other day I actually heard a member of the human species ask the simple question: "Hey, wait a minute, how come no one is in jail?" To which there is no intelligent response. A teen ager, who happens to get caught with an ounce of marijuana in his pocket, goes directly to the slammer. But the banksters, who have destroyed the global financial system, are free to hide out on their yachts, untouched by the legal system.

President Obama and Congress can throw as many trillions of paper dollars at the problem as they can borrow or print, but until white collar crime in this country is treated as a major felony, even as a capital offense, and members of the SEC, who do not carry out their job of enforcement, are considered felons, then the confidence of the American people will not return. And without trust in the system, there can be no substantive economic recovery.

The President may want to take the "high" road and look only "forward," but the country wants a level playing field where no one is above the law.

03/19/2009