"Corruption ... so tawdry and transparent"

Greenwald (via Digby):

Just think about how this works. People like Rubin, Summers and Gensler shuffle back and forth from the public to the private sector and back again, repeatedly switching places with their GOP counterparts in this endless public/private sector looting.

When in government, they ensure that the laws and regulations are written to redound directly to the benefit of a handful of Wall St. firms, literally abolishing all safeguards and allowing them to pillage and steal. Then, when out of government, they return to those very firms and collect millions upon millions of dollars, profits made possible by the laws and regulations they implemented when in government. Then, when their party returns to power, they return back to government, where they continue to use their influence to ensure that the oligarchical circle that rewards them so massively is protected and advanced.

This corruption is so tawdry and transparent -- and it has fueled and continues to fuel a fraud so enormous and destructive as to be unprecedented in both size and audacity -- that it is mystifying that it is not provoking more mass public rage.

Clap the lot of 'em in stocks--the ones in the illustration above! The stocks and/or the pillory were vwery usaeful insturments for reprimanding folks, like the banksters, who'd outgrown their humility. A day in stocks/the pillory usually had a deflating effect (if not a fatal one) on the egos of those who offended the polis...

By the way, the first guy in line for the Pillory should be Larry Summers. Geithner, Gelser, Summers, Rubin, Greenspan, Paulson, Bernanke, Gramm, every last one of 'em needs to spend 24 hours in a Pillory on the national mall...The one right next to the National Guillotine...