Tag Archives: Diane Rehm

The fact that government outrage continues to provide the international media with grist for its insatiable mill is one of the great ironies in this scenario: perturbed at the site’s revelation of embarrassing diplomatic discussions and fumblings–tales only mildly interesting to the average reader–government officials are now in the process of creating a better, and far more spectacular story over First Amendment rights and the ‘treasonable’ activities of a Dutch citizen accused of committing “sex by surprise” (in Sweden?).

Even worse, the official call from some quarters for draconian regulation of the internet has given Russia (which suggests nominating Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize) and China, a human-rights violator of mammoth proportion, opportunities to ‘prove’ to an already hostile world that when Washington suddenly finds itself looking out through wall-to-wall glass, this nation of stone-throwers is no better than anyplace else.

We know that the global banking system is riddled with corruption (‘vulnerable’ to corruption may be more polite), some authored by its own principals, some embraced opportunistically by financial insiders to snatch sudden profits, a great deal ushered into the world’s financial system by bankers in search of the commissions and corporate profits that ‘high net-worth customers’ (in many cases, money launderers) bring in. And sometimes the bad guys exploit legitimate financial service providers. But the question remains, and it turns on the distinction between deregulation and irregularity, between fair play and laissez-faire, between the right of the ‘haves’ to have still more, and the right of the people to real economic protection under the law.
At what point does financial entrepreneurship turn criminal, and how blind an eye is the US prepared to turn toward banking practices that clearly prosper the powerful and imperil the growing ranks of the poor, in the United States and across the world?