Corporate Diversions 1A

I thought Korten got this especially right, at an important time to do so:

Who Really Crashed the Economy?
And why do we keep blaming the wrong people?

by David Korten

Mobs disrupt town meetings. Glenn Beck amplifies a careless remark by a mid-level White House staff member into a threat of a national communist takeover. The right wing spin machine creates a parent revolt over a presidential pep talk to students urging them to study hard and stay in school. Meanwhile, the Party of No blocks action on health care and climate disruption with lies and distortions and declares President Obama’s stimulus package a socialist plot and a failed waste of taxpayer money.

There is a common thread. Each of these media events has diverted attention from Wall Street’s responsibility for crashing the economy, taking trillions of dollars in public bailout money, and then rewarding itself with outlandish bonuses.

The Wall Street corporations funding the front organizations that orchestrate these and other diversions hope we will forget that America’s number one problem is Wall Street—and the overpaid Wall Street casino gamblers who destroyed our economy in a reckless test of the theory that markets can self-regulate and that the unrestrained pursuit of individual greed is beneficial to society.

Wall Street’s greatest fear is that the public might demand Congress and the president shut down the casino. Any issue that shifts attention away from Wall Street and pins the blame for job loss and mortgage foreclosures on President Obama works in its favor.

The right wing media campaign would have us believe that President Obama, not Wall Street, is the nation’s #1 problem. He’s a socialist. He’s an irresponsible spender. He isn’t really patriotic (remember, he didn’t wear a flag pin). America’s lost jobs and the mortgage foreclosures are his doing. Never mind that he was still living in Chicago working as a civil rights lawyer and then an Illinois state senator while Wall Street was putting together the high-risk financial instruments that ultimately brought down the economy.

See:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/blog-who-really-crashed-the-economy