ONE CLOWN DOWN, A THOUSAND MORE TO GO

It was announced on September 30th that the President and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of America, one Kenneth D. Lewis, was "retiring." He is 62 years old and looks fit and tanned, as if he could go on for plenty more years of running giant financial institutions into the ground for many millions of dollars per year, but he has been under pressure to resign ever since the Greeding Frenzy of 2008 nearly bankrupted the entire world. He had been the boss-of-all-bosses at BOA since 2001, plenty enough time to either realize that America's financial institutions were heading toward the edge of a cliff on a runaway train and sounding the alarm and instituting reforms, or sticking his own snout in the trough and swallowing as much slop as he possibly could before it was empty.

Mr. Lewis and a thousand more like him chose to fatten their own ample butts and wallets at the expense of the rest of humanity. At the height of the Greeding Frenzy, Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch for the bargain basement price of 50 billion dollars and rewarded its outgoing executive with billions in bonuses even though Merrill had lost a lot of money, just like practically every other bank and investment house on the planet. The reasons that this happened are many, and their names are stenciled in gold lettering on the doors to their corner offices in one gleaming skyscraper or another. Greed and larceny emanating from the top down, coupled with slack to nonexistent government regulatory oversight, led to the worst financial collapse since 1929. Five trillion dollars in wealth disappeared and millions of lives were ruined by job losses and the evaporation of life savings, many of them retirees with no time or means to recoup their losses.

Among those who were ruined, conspicuously absent from that list were the fabulously wealthy top executives who caused all the damage. Damned few of them lost their jobs, even when they had to go hat in hand to Uncle Sam to bail out their companies to the tune of trillions of taxpayer dollars. During all this these inept buffoons somehow managed to maintain their arrogant superior airs, as well as awarding themselves huge bonuses for a job poorly done. When they had to appear before Congress to explain exactly how they steered companies that had been astoundingly successful for generations into the ground and nearly ruined the strongest economy in history, their condescending Roman Consul attitude made everyone in America want to slap the patrician grins off their incompetent, greedy faces.

Still heads did not roll. A very few CEOs were forced out with multimillion dollar Golden Parachute severance pay and several were arrested, but for the most part it has been the same cast of shady characters running our economy and handling everybody's money. They keep telling us that their banks are recovering nicely, thank you, even though the rest of the economy is flat-lining, with unemployment approaching levels not seen in many decades. Countless homes that have been foreclosed upon are sitting abandoned and falling into disrepair while their former owners are living who-knows-where doing who-knows-what to make ends meet. Meanwhile the perpetrators of their misery glide to work in limousines and hop around the globe in private jets, miles and miles above the economic carnage they created.

They blather on and about the magical natural corrective forces of free market capitalism at work as they suck Socialist bailouts from our government to prop up their complete inability to deal with the natural corrective forces of free market capitalism at work. At the same time they criticize the same government who bailed their sorry asses out for trying to help ordinary working Americans get medical coverage for their children. That's the kind of Socialism they insist is ruining our nation, the kind that is not bestowed upon the super wealthy. The most amazing thing about all this is that the townsfolk haven't stormed their castles with torches and pitchforks and strung them all up from the nearest tree. At least not yet. Good riddance, Mr. Lewis. Take a few trainloads of your pals along with you, willya? Better yet, all of you go directly to jail, and do not collect another red cent from the community chest.