Futurejacked on a purported email from a member of Congress who, after saying the financial industry needs to be deliberately insulted says, “I’m open to other ideas, and I am looking for volunteers who want to hold the sons of bitches so I can beat the crap out of them.”
If it is “real” and not agit-prop, then the socionomically predicted anger may actually be swelling from unfocused irritation to a “heads will roll” focused hate. Show trials and witch hunts to follow and the financial elites will have built the bonfire for their own immolation.
The rage is real and growing. Even the Drudge Report and many conservative blogs don’t like the Paulson plan.
From a WaPo op-ed
When a financial journalist friend of mine asked a prominent executive how this would all end, he replied, “With riots in the streets.”
Either a riot or a bloodbath.
As a trader said when asked to sum up the current situation on Wall Street: “Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered.”
Like FutureJacked, I do not endorse violence in the streets. Should the coming investigations show that some Wall Streeters broke any number of laws, then fine, toss them in prison, invoke RICO, and take their money as forfeit. But inchoate violence in the streets solves nothing. Rather we need organized, disciplined, and focused protest. The object is to affect real change, not get vengeance.
I agree, not just because I dislike violence but because I fear that rioters would be playing right into the hands of the plutocrats.