Posted on 01/26/2010 4:40:39 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Finally I recalled the last resort of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: Let them eat cake. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1769
According to noted economist David Rosenberg, since the multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street began over a year ago, we have lost 6.2 million jobs, auto sales are down 23%, housing starts are down 30%, bank credit is down $500 billion, household net worth is down $7 trillion, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses have failed or are near failure.
Yet Wall Street is booming. Bonuses on Wall Street are expected to set new records this year. The big Wall Street banks are making a fortune even as the rest of the country is still mired in the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Maybe due to guilt, or noblesse oblige, or just as a public relations stunt, Goldman Sachs (GS Quote) and Warren Buffett, two of the largest beneficiaries of the taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailout, announced that they would give $500 million to small businesses to promote job growth. Because that amount is basically what Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway(BRK.A Quote) and Goldman Sachs earn in a couple of days, it is so small and pathetic that any reasonable person can only see it as adding insult to injury. Why are very smart people like Buffett and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, unaware of this? For the same reason that, hundreds of years ago, in pre-revolutionary France the royalty could not understand why the peasants were starving.
Although it is not known which spoiled French princess originally uttered the phrase "Let them eat cake" in response to a question of what the starving peasants should eat if they had no bread,
(Excerpt) Read more at thestreet.com ...
No, no, no. The reason is not "misunderstanding." Even on the face of it, it is a completely irrational conclusion. People who can manipulate markets and governments to make billions of dollars do not "misunderstand" reactions to their work. But if you disallow "misunderstaning" - what's left as an explanation?
Gloating. That's right, gloating. People who can manipulate markets and governments to make billions of dollars ENJOY it. And they enjoy the RESULTS of it - the poverty, the social destruction, the confusion, the despair. And they GLOAT over that suffering by grinding their victim's faces in it, by doing things like throwing those victims a nickle and making them say "thank you" for being allowed to struggle another day.
People need to learn about evil, and stop being confused. At the very least, stop being laughed at by evil for their denial of their victimization.
I learned just recently from a Freeper that the “cake” in question was not the wedding, birthday, or celebration variety, but the burnt chunks of carbon that were left in the ovens. This puts an especially nasty turn on that phrase, it was not aloof, it was evil.
Expanding support for families balancing work with caring for elderly relatives with a $102.5 million Caregiver Initiative adding $52.5 million in funding to Department of Health and Human Services caregiver support programs that provide temporary respite care, counseling, training, and referrals to critical services. The administration says the extra funding will allow nearly 200,000 additional caregivers to be served and 3 million more hours of respite care to be provided. It also adds $50 million to programs that provide transportation help, adult day care, and in-home services, such as aides to help seniors bathe and cook, help which eases the burden for family members and helps seniors stay in their homes.
Stopped reading after seeing Rousseau’s name.
Rousseau was one of the great dirtbags of all time, and not someone anyone should look to for wisdom.
The takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street.
A bloodless coup.
The Wall Street Liberal, created a panic, and cleaned house. Then blamed every one else.
If that money was loaned to small business, we would be doing fine.
I don’t know where we go from here, It does not look good.
This hate is digusting to every moral person on earth. In fact, it is fair to say that hatred of the rich is the root of all modern political evil, for the last 100 years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.