September 11,2009/1

President Obama is going to Wall Street this coming Monday to make a speech. The date chosen is the first anniversary of the failure of Lehman Brothers. The speech will presumably be self-congratulatory, about how the world has been made safe for capitalism. This stinks; it smells like dancing on the grave - but presumably the President, for whom I am losing increments of trust and respect every waking day, will stick the Bush administration with the Lehman Brothers decision, which unarguably can be said to have made matters much worse than they need have been, but which did open the door for Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and others to mulct the taxpayer for upwards of a trillion dollars. In the passing twelvemonth whose anniversary the President will be marking, millions more have lost jobs, homes, self-respect, medical security. Is all this compensated for by Goldman's record profits? Is this proper cause for celebration? Not in my book.