Easter Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

This morning (on the day we apparently celebrate that glorious moment in the history of evolution when chocolate bunnies developed ovipositors out of which they poop marshmallow chicken babies) the Pope of All Capitalism appeared on “This Week” to give his traditional Easter Message to the faithful.

George Stephanopoulos

Terry Moran

Christiane Amanpour

Jake Tapper: Isn’t it true that the radical deregulation of the markets and the subsequent meltdown and looting of the financial systems at the hands of sociopathic greedheads in an indictment of Ayn Rand's philosophy of turning the entire world over to sociopathic greedheads?

Greenspan: Not at all. We just misread what the risks were, because we had no experience in calculating the kinds of risks we're going to have from now on in our Brave New World of institutionalized Ponzi schemes.

Shorter Greenspan: Just because the priests in the Holy Church of Capitalism have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will --

1. Serially rape the economy if they are not strictly and constantly regulated.
2. Use their position and power to cover for each other as they serially rape the economy if they are not strictly and constantly regulated.

-- there is no reason whatsoever for me to doubt the fundamental correctness of my Dogma of Radical Deregulation.

Or, in lingua Digby...

...
You'll notice that Greenspan talks about "competitive markets," not Rand and laissez-faire as Tapper asked him. But that's to be expected. The man is now pretending to be shocked, simply shocked at all the gambling that went on and literally has no answers other than raising capital requirements to prevent it from happening in the future. But that's because he still doesn't really believe that what happened was a result of greedy gamblers willingly blowing up the entire system as long as they get theirs. (Why, that doesn't seem like the John Galt he knows at all...)

More later, once I get this bad taste out of my mouth.

For now..


Let

The

People

Of

The

Church

Say

Amen!

Or if you're one of those loser, Dirty Hippie types who like your sermons drawn straight from the well, this from 1 Timothy 6: 3-10 is the longer, correct version of a shorter, often-misquoted sentiment. I like this longer version, because it accurately identifies the poisonous link between a destructive obsession with money and the equally destructive obsession with abstruse verbal trickery and the "envy, rivalry, insults (and) evil suspicions" among the corrupt-minded:

...
Whoever teaches something different and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the religious teaching

is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes. From these come envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions,

and mutual friction among people with corrupted minds, who are deprived of the truth, supposing religion to be a means of gain.

Indeed, religion with contentment is a great gain.

For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.

If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.

Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.

Scripture?

Shit, this sounds like Rupert Murdoch's business model.