This Can't End Well

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone:

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

We have a few options right now.  We still don't have to let our baser instincts rule over us - not the way these asshole banksters have done anyway.  But we'd better be watching very carefully for the flashpoint.  That special moment when too many people believe there's no chance to break 'em up, so they'll have to shoot 'em down.

I say it can't end well because even tho' there have been a few notable exceptions just in our own history, it's far more likely that the kind of power Taibbi's trying to warn us about is simply too seductive.

(ed note:  I carp a lot about "silver-spoon-legacy pukes" - Matt Taibbi is definitely not among them)