She gets it!

Elizabeth Warren has a seismic interview in the Boston Globe:

[WARREN] The insiders, the investment bankers and other financial services specialists, have a system that works very well for them. The problem is they're now using the outsiders' money to fund that system. Their system has collapsed. AIG is not functional without substantial taxpayer dollars. And the insiders don't seem to have appreciated the seismic shift in their world when they need money, gifts, subsidies from outsiders.

Anyone who thinks that they can take tens [hundreds!!] of billions of dollars of taxpayer money and continue to operate business as usual lives in a fantasy world that I don't understand. Culture clash? No! This is not a culture clash. This is not about taxpayers who don't get it. This is about people who think [in a] fantasy, that their world is prosperous and continues to create value that can be parsed out privately, when they are relying on huge subsidies from the taxpayer. It's just wrong!

I believe that ultimately, the banks exist to serve the American people. Not vice versa. We cannot have a vibrant economy without a strong and reliable banking system, but it is impossible to save the banking system independently of saving the American family.

The power of this panel is derived entirely from the voice of the American people. If they stay out of the policy debates, then Treasury can spend at will and reshape the American economy with no one in the room but insiders. If they are involved, the policies will look different.

It's the design of the rules going forward that will tell us or that will determine whether we are moving to a cyclical economy with high wealth, high risk, and crashes every 10 to 15 years. Or whether we will emerge, as we did following the new regulatory reforms in the Great Depression*, with a more stable economic system that benefits people across the economic spectrum. It's an amazing moment in history.

Double fucking Five-Star Vegas-style ranking bonus pony bingo!

It's bad enough when the administration keeps single payer advocates away from the table. For the bailouts, the table doesn't even exist, and the trillions the banksters are sucking up are going to make any kind of health reform harder.

It's called a kleptocracy because it klepts. And now that it's all out in the open, they go right on as before and say "What are you going to do about it?"

Aux duck pits, citoyens!

NOTE Via TalkLeft. What kind of weak-ass editor puts this in the opinion section instead of news or analysis? Who do they think Warren is? Mike Barnicle? And what kind of weak-ass owner -- that would be the Times -- puts this interview in a regional paper instead of the national Week in Review? And why isn't Warren on the teebee along with the shouting heads?

NOTE * Why don't we turn the banks into regulated public utility?