"Plutocracy" Doesn't Mean We Are Ruled by a Disney Dog

The billionaires are in charge, and they're coming to get you.

Morgan officials stated baldly that they chose not to inform the Controller of the Currency about discrepancies in trading accounts, without the slightest regard that they might be breaking the law, in the conviction that it was Morgan’s privilege not to do so. Senior regulators explained that they did not see it as their job to monitor compliance or to check whether claims made by their Morgan counterparts were correct. They also accepted abusive treatment, e.g. being called “stupid” to their face by senior Morgan executives. That’s plutocracy at work. The Senate Finance Committee hearing drew only 3 senators – yet another sign of plutocracy at work. When mega-banks make illicit profits by money laundering for drug cartels and get off with a slap on the wrist, as has HSBC and others, that too is plutocracy.

From CounterPunch's Michael Brenner via AlterNet.

The part of socialism that absolutely made sense was distrusting the rich, but that got thrown out with the dismantling of communism at the end of the last century.  Bathwater, you know.