links for 2009-03-24

March 24, 2009 in Links

• The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone
  People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout…cemented and formalized a political trend…the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
  The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess…
  The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money…But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron
  (tags: politics finance economics economy bailout recession)
• Poor slaves – all of us | Prep Talk
  Truly, we are like Roman peasants at the circus, willing to get excited by the diversions our emperors toss at us. And because the strength of our voices can determine whether they allow the slave in the arena to live or die, we believe our rulers are driven by our desires. But the real drama of decisions that shape our lives are being played out in deep chambers behind high walls. The motivations, of greed and power, are common to public figures of all time; but the scale in this decade of trillions of dollars – or kharabs or rupees – is unprecedented.
  (tags: business politics media government governance)