It was an economy raped and savaged by Wall Street banks and hedge funds with conspiratorial help from a number of quarters, the global economy brought to the brink of ruin. It was the same motivation coming with most rapes, self-gratification and power. Americans responded with redemptive loans – bailouts otherwise declared anathema by free-market barkers. The bailout brought prosperity to some of the high-riders – the top ten percent, this while 90 percent – indeed 90% of global citizens — still bear the burdens left by the malefactors’ greed.

Though token recovery now visits us, the seeds of ruin still lie like zombies set to pounce out of the shadows in some horror movie. Meanwhile unscathed and unprosecuted, despicable grifters, despoilers of income and wealth, continue their shadowy mission of greed, still unregulated, still arrogant and still convinced of their intrinsic superiority among mere humans. Like zombies there is nothing fruitful about their manipulation of the life blood of the economy, only sterility. The popular media still celebrates American superiority, forgetting its Wall Street warts.

Time Magazine’s article, “Why the Economy Could Pop!” claims the economy is finally coming back to life, not mentioning the grifters who tanked the economy or how the “Pop” could easily become “implode,” though the last part of the article does concede “It’s still a wimpy recovery.” Still not much attention is given to the growing gulf between the rich and everyone else – for example, share of output and rising productivity has been declining for the worker since the 1970s, as shown in the chart above.

The superhero, comic-book nature of the article casts a larger-than-life exceptionalism around our singular economic recovery, following the deep recession. Less notable in the article was continuing high unemployment and the still dangerous unregulated Wall Street banking casino-like situation. For example, “The Sleeping Giant Stirs” shows an image of a colossal giant – the US economy – scaring its own participants, more like intimidated by wage and job-killing decisions by the powerful corporate moguls.

The 58% of output going to labor as opposed to over 65% as recently as eleven years ago speaks volumes about the trend leading to a “wimpy recovery,” but the more recent hijacking of income and wealth by the few is a crime not addressed by Republicans or Democrats, brought by conditions that continue to threaten the bottom 90% income groups — actually throughout the globe.

Somehow those 90 percent know that something is rotten, not just in government but in the upper tiers of our economic system. PIIGS — Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain are still in a world of hurt. Perhaps many in these countries do not know that their problems relate mostly to Wall Street swindlers. PIIGS private banks invested heavily in mortgage-backed securities that sported AAA ratings, though toxic trash. The rating agencies like S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch lied, being paid by customers like B of A, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Chase, and the defunct Bear Stearns – all immensely benefitting from the toxic assets. When Wall Street crashed so did European banks. Now the bailed-out hedge funds, which helped tank the economy, want European bonds fully repaid and want to divorce European workers from their safety nets.

It is not likely that Wall Street banks will be regulated or investment banking separated from commercial banking. Even while unemployment continues, wages stagnate, public employment suffers, benefits shrink for workers, education funds dry up, and infrastructure crumbles. In effect, the economic crash set the stage for a continued shifting of income and wealth from the lowest 90% of income groups to the top ten percent.

The rich and powerful do dangle easy targets for our outrage. The real perpetrators are too rich and distant to hate. Republicans, agents of the rich, help to substitute big government, labor unions, shiftless borrowers, or partakers of entitlements for the real perpetrators.

Though the whole world is affected by the greed-fest at the top, perhaps a large percentage of those affected will never know the real source of their hardship and travail, but will strike out at the most visible villains, and those in control will make sure the targets are not them.

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