Guest Post by Mike Krieger
Stunning Quote – Larry Summers to Elizabeth Warren in 2009: “Insiders Don’t Criticize Other Insiders”
A couple of weeks ago, Princeton and Northwestern released a very important study that proved statistically what many of us already knew about the American political process. It is nothing more than an oligarchy.
It’s one thing to read an academic study showing how cancerous the political system is, it’s quite another to hear a description of how things work from one of the biggest crony weapons of mass societal destruction himself, Mr. Larry Summers.
A recent review in the New York Times of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s new memoir “A Fighting Chance” recalls a stunningly despicable quote by Summers. In the spring of 2009, when the banker handout, I mean bailout, was a heated topic of discussion, Elizabeth Warren attended a dinner with Mr. Summers who at the time was the director of the National Economic Council and a top economic adviser to President Obama. This is what transpired:
After dinner, “Larry leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice,” Ms. Warren writes. “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.
What is so incredible about the quote above is that it essentially proves correct everything I and many others have been saying about how “things work” in America these days. The statements above describe a petty, childish oligarchy of arrogant fools. This small club of people call all the shots and do not listen to “outside” ideas whatsoever. This is why nothing changes. This is why the same people are recycled through positions of power over and over again no matter how badly they screw up and how many millions of lives they ruin. This is why there is a two-tiered justice system in which the rich and connected never go to jail, while the average citizen can have his home raided by police for a parody Twitter account. This is why the 0.01% have been able to loot all of the nation’s wealth while median inflation adjusted wages have been declining for 40 years.
The reason is because the “status quo” in America consists of a deranged, immoral, arrogant, selfish fraternity of inept children who protect each other at the expense of everyone and everything else. Until the status quo gets the boot, this nation will continue to decline. Forget reforms, the entire status quo needs to be tossed aside once and for all. The insiders must be turned into outsiders.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
One’s initial reaction is the the current “insiders” need to be placed before an immobile area divider and sanctioned with extreme prejudice (preferably by drone). Just kidding (I think). BC-LR to all
I like to read Gary North. Gary North taught me this: the market is far more powerful than politics.
Lesson: if you don’t like the oligarchs, stop buying from them and buy from your neighbors. Better yet, trade with them so it can’t be taxed. Plant a big ass garden: it is your no oligarch/no taxes space.
They’re only powerful because we choose to send them our money.