Less than a month after Richard Grasso received his walking papers for the crime of greed, we learn that his two top bosses will retire with $22 million each and that the NYSE Senior Management team could receive up to $125 million.

 

 

One cannot help but read such "news" against a backdrop of the following conditions:

 

- The national unemployment rate is 6.1%, officially the highest since 1993, but even these estimates are grossly skewed by government manipulation

 

- The dollar has fallen to a 3-year low

 

- In record numbers, even working Americans are waiting in food lines, and hunger has a new face in this country.

 

- The numbers of hungry American children, living in poverty is increasing: 38% of American children (27 million) live in low income families; 16% (12 million) live in poverty and 7% (5 million) live in extreme poverty.

 

- While finding reliable statistics is difficult, it is clear that Public school teachers are being laid off and classrooms are growing in size.  All you have to do is perform an internet search on "teacher layoff" and you'll see the thousands of schools across the country reporting the crisis in public schools.

 

- The number of Americans without health insurance is 41.2 million - and growing - at the end of 2002.  The health care system in the U.S. is in crisis and chaos with no "fix" in sight.

 

- The numbers of home foreclosures are the higher than they have been in 30 years.

 

- Americans are filing for Personal bankruptcy in record numbers.

 

- The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.57 billion per day since September 30, 2002!

 

In this economic environment we read about the theft and abuse of the U.S. economy by the few, the rich and the greedy.  In addition to these vulgar retirement packages by managers of the New York Stock Exchange, "Big Board co-presidents", Catherine Kinney and Robert Britz received $2.7 million in salary and benefits in 2002. 

 

 

But what is most interesting is that a few of the rich have revolted  against Grasso and that the corporate media has chosen to expose just a handful of those who are gouging the economy.  Would they have us believe that the sneak-thieves at NYSE are the only robbers in Brooks Brothers clothes? ... and it's not as though this is some new phenomena!  So why choose to go after these self-indulgent creeps? ... and why go after only a few at this time?  Why not go after those who are sucking up the blood-money from the so-called "reconstruction" in Iraq?  Why not go after the Bechtels, Chevrons, Halliburtons, WorldComs, Ananova-Weirs and others?  Why the NYSE and why now?

 

I don't pretend to know the answer to these questions, but I have enough good ole' common sense left in me to know that a personal annual income disparity of $2,700,000 and $15,000 among people living in the same nation, under the same government is vulgar and immoral.  I know the smell of smokescreen when a few are singled out by the corporate media for attack ... while so many others among the moneyed elite are skating.  Are the corporations and corporate media asking us to believe that they found a rare case of corruption in the NYSE and all will be well when the NYSE cleans house? If we believe that, we can also believe that they will eliminate insider trading on Wall Street when they prosecute Martha Stewart.

 

What are the House, the Senate and the Neocon-Bush Regime doing about all this?  By what we read in the corporate media, it seems Washington's only "fix" is to:

 

1.  Cultivate a climate of fear and racism throughout the country.

 

2.  Put more cops on the street, bolstering the most powerful police state this country has ever known.

 

3.  Increase the government's power to collect information on its citizens and to surveil them, calling it "Homeland Security".

 

4.  Pump more money into the industrial-military complex and "The War on Terrorism".

 

5.  Gift-wrap and send massive packages of money to big corporations who are "rebuilding" Iraq and Aghanistan.

 

6.  Keep the gate-valves wide open on the $$ pipeline to Israel for "restructuring the Middle East".

 

But cheer up!  When the regime in Washington shows us this response on the end of their middle finger, it is important for us to remember that there are a few predictions about people, societies and governments one can make that are as reliable as the law of gravity:

 

1.  There  is no honor among thieves.

2.  Inherent weakness in a system, no matter how well defended ... no matter how well hidden - will bring that system down if not excised like a malignant tumor.

3.  When people lose their basic security of food, clothing and shelter, they revolt.

4. Arrogance ALWAYS oversteps itself!

 

The only remaining questions are: How many people will suffer and die - how many other countries will be attacked? How many children will go to bed hungry? ... while Nero plays his fiddle?