Consolidation in the financial markets...the road to the ultimate triumph of finance capitalism

Consolidation in the financial industry is going fast a pace. Wachovia is folding into Citibank; Merrill Lynch & Washington Mutal in JPMorganChase. The bailout when it comes will not sink its teeth into the meat of the problem...mortgages, but will refloat the meanies who brought us the subprime mortgage meltdown. The talking heads talk of Main Street, but for all the blarney, the bluster, and the blowhards, little will be done for the little man or the little woman. A good barometre is the rising unemployment numbers, the tight family budgets, and the general impoverishment of the majority of the US population. We are seeing, dare we mention the road to a national socialism which would make il Signor Mussolini quite happy. Confidence will fill the sails of the rich and the super rich who may feel some pain in portfolios of theirs, but won't stop a lavish style of living which brings to mind Dickens...picture small children, shoeless in the snow, looking through the frosted window panes of a rich family's Christmas dinner. And that's more or less what the Main Street is seeing and feeling and experiencing. And alas no matter the new tune after the elections, the rich will benefit because the shift in privilege begun under the false prophet Ronald Reagan is not torn out root and branch.