The Daily Show: Yeah, The Banks Own Us

While most of the news media can’t keep in mind what happened four months ago, on Thursday The Daily Show reminded us of what happened four years ago.

JON STEWART: Somewhere around four years ago, our economy experienced a cyclical fiscal phenomenon known as a catastrof*ck, when our largest financial institutions began to collapse after making incredibly risky bets, basically using our pension money to gamble on the value of our houses. Because apparently the business of just taking your money and and loaning it out to other people at slightly higher interest rates is just too reliable.

Stewart also reminds us that Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase was hailed as a hero standing strong amidst the catastrof*ck, hailed all across cable television. One question I have is when we can admit that business “news” on television is more akin to the hawking of products we see on QVC than it is to actual rational analysts. And now that JP Morgan Chase has lost an extraordinary amount of money due to lack of regulation or restraint, is there any chance our politicians will wake up and start acting like responsible adults?

The answer appears to be no. The Daily Show played clips of Dimon getting his butt kissed by Republican Senators Bob Corker (Tennessee), Jim DeMint (South Carolina), and Mike Johanns (Nebraska). DeMint, for one, demonstrates how the Republicans simply don’t understand basic economics.

DeMINT: We can hardly sit in judgment of your losing two billion. We lose twice that every day here in Washington.

Stewart hits this out of the park.

STEWART: Does Senator DeMint think that spending money is the same as losing money? “You know, I had ten million dollars here yesterday, but now all I see is this f*cking highway.”

Of course, a major reason that the senators treated Dimon so kindly is because they are in the pocket of the big business. Corker’s questioning of Dimon, for example, was designed to try and discredit government oversight of the financial industry by cajoling Dimon into dismissing the efficacy of the Dodd-Frank bill.

STEWART: Senator Bob Corker voted against provisions like banning naked credit default swaps, keeping banks from getting too big to fail, and opposed reinstating the Glass-Steagall rules that kept banks from gambling with the money depositors had in the first place.

In Corker’s defense, it’s not as though he believes tougher rules would work. He just doesn’t believe in regulation, much preferring banks and corporations to plunder and pillage our economic system unhindered.

So this is what we get — the best government money can buy.