At first, I wasn’t really going to read this article, and then I got hooked. The 50 most loathsome people of 2008. Don’t let the offensive tone put you off, they’re not making any shit up, just being a little fucking offensive. But then again, if you’re reading this, you’re used to f-bombs flying around here like you when you were a kid living with your parents. Though I may not always agree with the sentiments of that piece, their facts are in-line.
Madoff made the list, Limbaugh made the list, Phil Gramm. There’s something for everyone.
Whoops, hit publish without the quote:
6. Hank Paulson
Charges: The latest practitioner of the real Bush Doctrine, which is indistinguishable from Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. This time, it was Paulson, not Powell, holding up a vial of toxic mortgage backed securities, but the similarly election-panicked congressional reaction’s been the same—a panicked passage of whatever crazy late-term legislation the White House wants, namely Paulson’s 3-page “Gimme the money and go away” bill, plus $150 billion in anonymous pork, in one last massive federal theft on the way out the White House door, costing more than the entire U.S. space program for its 50 years of existence, even in inflation-adjusted dollars. Paulson’s initial spending plan was the financial equivalent of blowing into a broken balloon, and his typically Bushian demands for unfettered power seemed appropriate for a guy who looks and sounds like the ghost-melted Nazis from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Exhibit A: “It’s a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”
Sentence: Crushed by falling brokers.
That’s one of the better ones, I’ll leave the rest to you.