Rant of the Week

Fleeced

On the whole, America provides a substantial segment of the population with a good living, a good life. The average middle-class wage-earner has a nice car, a furnished home, a high definition TV and satellite dish or cable, a bed, and food in the fridge. That's what they get from the deal, from this arrangement of affairs called American capitalism. Maybe, on the whole, it's not such a bad deal. When you hear about what the banks and the investment firms and the equity clubs have been doing over the past 20 years, it is clear that the average middle-class wager-earner is also being fleeced by a criminal class that is really no better than those poorly-dressed miscreants who break into your house or steal your car. The crucial difference: Wall Street does it on a grand scale, stealing hundreds of millions or even billions instead of a few hundred or thousands.