Seeing the Forest has a nice compendium of Conservative triumphalism on the glorious financial de-regulation of Iceland. But here's his lead:

The future is uncertain, but it seems sure that every Icelander will see a big decline in their standard of living, and that includes many who never really profited from the recent boom.

Funny how that works out. And here's STF's conclusion (quoting The Canadian):

What is somewhat incredible [why?] is the apparent lack of remorse or self-reflection and doubt being expressed by the ideologues who put these policies in place and caused this economic and financial meltdown. Amazingly [why?], many neo-cons continue to argue that this was caused by regulations that were too strong, or by a confluence of unlikely events, including a rise in “leftist attitudes“.

Yes, funny how that works out:

And what is absolutely not incredible to me is the obvious "lack of remorse or self-reflection and doubt" expressed by the Village, including both parties -- with a few honorable, and individual, exceptions -- and their owners.

From thirty thousand feet, where the lay of the land becomes completely obvious, what's happening?

1. Two trillion from us to banks -- and those corps that decided to call themselves banks -- with no accountability (one trillion from the bailout, another trillion from loans made before the bailout). These banks promptly paid themselves large salaries, bought other banks to make themselves too big to fail, or stuffed the money in the mattress. What they did not do was unfreeze the credit markets by starting to lend again, which was the ostensible purpose of the trillions. Note that Gross World Product (according to the CIA Factbook is $57 trillion, give or take. Therefore, we -- and by we, I mean they -- have put one man, Hank Paulson, in charge of a significant portion of the world's economy, with no oversight or accountability.* That looks a lot like a financial dictatorship to me.

2. Anything that does not help -- or at least not hurt -- the banks is off the table for the Village leadership and not even worthy of consideration (even in most "progressive" circles).

Off the table, so far, are the three programs that would help people the most, by helping them stay healthy, and helping them stay in their homes (simple, Maslow's hierarchy stuff):

(A) Single payer (We can't afford not to have single payer).

Single payer, by the way, would be of immense help to GM, for example. It would get them out of the health insurance business, and make them competitive with Canada again (heh). It's a measure of the insanity ("doing the same thing...") of Village discourse that this obvious solution isn't even discussed by the serious, whereas yet another bailout is.

(B) Homeowners Loan Corporation, or HOLC. HOLC would help both homeowners and the banks by cleaning up the bad loans sold during the bubble, and getting people back onto payment schedules they can afford. That helps the homeowners, but, and critically, it also helps the banks, since they can finally clean up their balance sheets.

(C) Constitutional restoration. The rule of law benefits the people; that's why we wrote The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution! Without the rule of law_{MR SUBLIMINAL FISA FISA FISA}, we're a banana Republic where elites do whatever they like with impunity, and only the little people get beaten into line.

So, bottom line: Bankers get help NOW NOW NOW. The people may get some help LATER LATER LATER.* So far, there's solid bipartisan agreement on that.

Please note that if you take what I have just written as a baseline***, both party leaderships suck. (1) The Big Give (as VastLeft) calls it -- the gigantic transfer of wealth from us to the banks -- was a thoroughly bipartisan affair; indeed, the Republican right did the Lord's work by opposing it. (2)(A) Neither leadership supports single payer, or (B) HOLC. And (C), the destruction of the rule of law, is a thoroughly bipartisan affair.

It's just possible that the Dem leadership can be forced to come to their senses -- and ensure the dominance of their party for another generation or two, just like FDR -- but so far, despite all the sturm and drang from partisans and distractors both amateur and professional, the parties have collaborated quite effectively to bring us to the current state of affairs: Thousands dying for lack of health care, many thousands going untreated, many more thousands losing their homes, others losing their homes when they lose their jobs, and nobody having the safety of knowing that we live in a country "with liberty and justice for all." These are all conditions the Village leadership cheerfully led us into, and now seeks to evade accountability for.

Fortunately, unlike Icelanders, we can grow our own food.

NOTE * To be fair, some minimal layers of accountability are only now being put into place. After a trillion in loans, and at least $250 billion to the banks, has already been flushed down Hank Paulson's magic crapper.

NOTE ** For the record, I supported the candidate who tried to shift the baseline slightly upward: The candidate who offered HOLC, and who at least offered a health care plan with a mandate.

NOTE I should have a point (D) that addresses the issues raised by the misogyny in the campaign, and the success of Proposition H8. But -- possibly through ignorance -- I'm not seeing a neatly packaged policy that I can weave in. (Readers?) My thought was something along the lines of "Equal Pay for Equal Work," equating that to the union struggles in the 30; I mean, if you're a two-income household, and both partners have more or less the same job, wouldn't you want $45K and $45K, rather than $45K and $36K? The idea being, just like the union movement (at least as it should be) to raise everyone up. My missing point (D) is especially unfortunate because the gays aren't taking any of this "Wait 'til he does something" shit. As far as they're concerned, he already did.