Bill Moyers Interviews Yves Smith And Matt Taibbi:How The Banks Are As Criminal As The Mafia

This excellent interview should be on your must-view list. Each of these authors has a new book out (which I'll leave to them to describe) about the intimate and frequently criminal relationship between the federal government and the banks which, in these Glass-Steagall-free days, allows banks to take unjustifiable risks with their account-holders' money, defraud the depositors about those very risks, and expect the taxpayers to pick up the losses because the banks are "too big to fail." Often enough, the few remaining honest conservatives advocate allowing these TBTF banks to fail anyway, but that is just another way of transferring the disaster to the public through their relationship, not with the government directly as taxpayers, but with the banks as account-holders.

I am not certain there is any way out of this bind, but holding the banksters directly accountable, as fully as possible, would be a good start. And that means, in the November elections, electing, um... not Republicans because they're in bed with the banks, and, er... not Democrats, because they're in bed with the banks. Never mind.

(Via Glenn Greenwald at Salon. For more by Taibbi, see Taibblog [on blogroll]. For more by Yves Smith, see Naked Capitalism [on blogroll])