This whole thing is depressing as hell. Wall Street's Masters of the Universe devastate the entire world economy, and all the House of Lords (aka the Senate) can think about is not making the bankers mad at them. Imagine how bad it is that their attempts at reform are only making the problem worse. Krugman spells it all out:

So here’s the situation. We’ve been through the second-worst financial crisis in the history of the world, and we’ve barely begun to recover: 29 million Americans either can’t find jobs or can’t find full-time work. Yet all momentum for serious banking reform has been lost. The question now seems to be whether we’ll get a watered-down bill or no bill at all. And I hate to say this, but the second option is starting to look preferable.

[...] There’s no question that consumers need much better protection. The late Edward Gramlich — a Federal Reserve official who tried in vain to get Alan Greenspan to act against predatory lending — summarized the case perfectly back in 2007: “Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”

Is it important that this protection be provided by an independent agency? It must be, or lobbyists wouldn’t be campaigning so hard to prevent that agency’s creation.

And it’s not hard to see why. Some have argued that the job of protecting consumers can and should be done either by the Fed or — as in one compromise that at this point seems unlikely — by a unit within the Treasury Department. But remember, not that long ago Mr. Greenspan was Fed chairman and John Snow was Treasury secretary. Case closed. The only way consumers will be protected under future antiregulation administrations — and believe me, given the power of the financial lobby, there will be such administrations — is if there’s an agency whose whole reason for being is to police bank abuses.

In summary, then, it’s time to draw a line in the sand. No reform, coupled with a campaign to name and shame the people responsible, is better than a cosmetic reform that just covers up failure to act.

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I still can't understand why David Gregory has a job, when it takes another reporter from another network to show the hypocrisy Gregory's own guests are displaying right at his Meet The Press desk.

Fareed Zakaria argued on February 4 that the budget Obama inherited was completely broken in the first place, first by the Bush tax cuts and secondly by the prescription drug plan for the elderly and two wars that were "off budget." The Bush Administration set the next several generations up with a massive budgetary mess that will not go away with politics running the governmental show.

But Zakaria points out that even those who are NOT elected officials, including Hank Paulson and Alan Greenspan, are so subservient to the corporate overlords that they will not hear of rescinding the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy even after they wail over the horrible-ness of the deficits.

Until some grown-ups run the show in Washington, our Federal financial house will be a condemned hovel.

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Oh yes, who better to bring in than Hank Paulson and Alan Greenspan to ask how we get the economy and the job market turned around in the United States? I know I always want to hear from the people who helped take a wrecking ball to something for advice on how to put it back together. Paulson says we need more certainty with how the financial markets are regulated for job growth. I'd love for someone to explain to me how letting the bankers and Wall Street know that we don't want them to act like casinos with our money any more has anything to do with whether we have businesses hiring Americans or not. Both of these guys didn't think we needed any regulations when they were running the show. Now that our economy is in the ditch, David Gregory thinks we should be taking their advice on how to fix it.

DAVID GREGORY: We're back and joined now by Henry Paulson, the Former Treasury Secretary and Alan Greenspan, Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Welcome both of you back to-- Meet The Press. Dr. Greenspan, here was the headline in the New York Times yesterday, after that Friday jobs report. And it was this. Jobless rate falls to 9.7 percent giving hope that the worst is over. Does this jobs report signal a turn around?

ALAN GREENSPAN: It doesn't signal a turnaround, but what it does say that a turnaround, which has already occurred is moving, but not in any aggressive manner.

DAVID GREGORY: And-- and-- Secretary Paulson, if you look at the jobs lost since the recession began, 8.4-- million jobs over that time horizon. The question is-- what's gonna cause a turnaround. When do you see this-- this jobless rate actually stay in the single digits?

HENRY PAULSON: Well, the economy is clearly recovering. And I have-- great confidence that-- we have such a dynamic private sector in this-- in this country, that they're eventually gonna begin creating jobs. Now, one of the factors, not the only factor, but one of the factors that will help is more certainty-- with regard to-- to actions out of Washington. And for instance-- certainty with regard to-- financial regulatory reform will-- will help.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders responds to a caller on Washington Journal who feels, as I'm sure a lot of often do, like throwing his hands up in the air and giving up when looking at the terrible direction this country has been headed for so long now.

Sanders: Mike you know, dispair is really not an option. If you're saying to me that our friends on Wall Street who's greed and wrecklessness and illegal behavior plunged this country into the recession that we're in right now, and that want to go back to the way they used to be and give themselves huge bonuses and so forth and so on, and you're telling me that the heads of the insurance companies and the drug companies have enormous power are fighting for their own interests and their own profits at the expense of everybody else, you're absolutely right. That is the reality.

But dispair is not an excuse. You can't say you give up. We can't give up. I've got four kids and six grandchildren -- beautiful kids all of them. I can't give up. You can't give up. What we have to do -- this is tough stuff -- is figure out how did we get to where we are right now.

Was it a wonderful idea as Alan Greenspan told us, as President Bush told us and some Democrats told us that we want to deregulate everything, let Wall Street do whatever they want... is that a good idea? Is it a great idea that the Supreme Court recently said corporations are people and they can contribute as much money as they want to the political process? Is that a good idea? It's a horrendous idea, but reality is clear. We don't talk about it terribly much in Congress or on T.V.

A small number of people who have incredible wealth and power control a lot of what goes on in America. That's the simple reality. But throwing your hands up and saying it's too much; I can't deal with it, or you can say, this is tough stuff. This is tough stuff and how do we once again bring ordinary people into the political process. How do you create a government that works for the middle class rather than the wealthy. It ain't easy. But giving up is not an option.

In October 2008, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan famously admitted during testimony before Congress that he was wrong about regulation of the U.S. financial system. Asked by Henry Waxman (D-CA) if "your ideology was not right, it was not working?" a humbled Greenspan lamented:

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."

Now, with a Democrat in the White House and nearly nine years after he blessed President Bush's budget-busting 2001 tax cuts for the wealthy, Alan Greenspan has become a born-again deficit hawk.

In Senate testimony Thursday, Greenspan strongly endorsed the deeply flawed Conrad-Gregg proposal to create a deficit commission, warning that the need to curb the American budget deficits "is more urgent than at any time in our history."

In testimony prepared for delivery before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Greenspan warned that the United States faces the threat of an unprecedented "fiscal crisis" because of record red ink.

Of course, when it really mattered, when he could have made a difference, Alan Greenspan gave George W. Bush a green light for red ink as far as the eye can see.

When he took office on January 20, 2001, President Bush inherited both a balanced budget and a CBO-projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion from Bill Clinton. But just five days later on January 25, 2001, Chairman Greenspan gave Bush and his Republican allies the air cover they needed to proceed with the $1.4 trillion tax cut package passed later that year. Greenspan testified to the Senate Budget Committee that "having a tax cut in place may, in fact, do noticeable good." As CNN noted at the time, "the Fed chairman's backing of tax cuts as economically sound likely will provide a boost to the new administration's proposals."

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So nice of David Gregory to make sure we all got to hear what the man who's been wrong about everything, Alan Greenspan, thinks about what we should do now to fix the economy he helped to mess up, or whether or not the Fed should be audited.

MR. GREGORY: This is an interesting question about our role in the world, how the rest of the world sees us, our commitment to capitalism and, in corporate America, Dr. Greenspan, the notion of where is the certainty? Washington is a big question mark now when it comes to climate policy, healthcare policy. A lot of businesses saying, "Look, we don't know what's coming down the pike." There's no impetus to grow, to expand, to invest.

DR. GREENSPAN: That's the key problem; that is, investment occurs when you have a stable economy and when you can foresee what's going on in the future. Because, remember, you make a risky investment which may have 10 years or 15 years life to it, and unless you have some semblance of a notion as to what is out there...

MR. GREGORY: Hm.

DR. GREENSPAN: ...you're going to be reluctant to invest. And that is key. I mean, I agree with Jim in this respect. I think it's very critical that we get the uncertainties out of the system.

MR. GREGORY: Do you think additional stimulus for jobs makes sense at this stage?

DR. GREENSPAN: No. I think what is missing in this whole discussion is that the--what I presume to be the major source of the recovery, and that is the remarkable increase in the amount of stock market wealth that has occurred in the last six to nine months. People think stock prices are just paper profits. They are not. They create real purchasing power and, most importantly, they create a fluidity into the financial system which is the reason why even though banks are not lending freely at this particular stage, they are solvent and the problems that we had six to nine months ago have disappeared, because essentially $5 trillion worth of increased equity is pouring into the economy. And you can see it in the retail sales figures. 401(k)s, for example, have increased by half a trillion dollars.

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Woody Allen in Take the Money and Run

I gotta tell you, the new found concern the Republicans possess for deficit spending is so unintentionally hilarious. They must thank their lucky stars for the mindless memory hole that is the collective American consciousness to not remember the drunken sailor spending that defined the past eight years. Evidently, from the guests this morning, spending will again be the focus, with lots of little digs on how the stimulus is obviously not working and how the best choice is to keep the Bush tax cuts. With Larry Summers, Christina Romer and Alan Greenspan as scheduled guests, what are the chances that someone will bring up sensible legislation and regulation such as the Glass-Steagall Act as the way to avoid another economic collapse? Not bloody likely, methinks. Also, our favorite grasping-to-be-relevant McCain minion, Joe Lieberman, will be back to give his very best Deputy Dog whine on how anything the Democrats propose for health care will cause him to have to filibuster reform. That's Joe, taking the (health insurance) money, and running.

ABC's "This Week" - Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council; Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers; former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan; Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich.; former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Dan Rather, Kelly O'Donnell, Helene Cooper, Andrew Ross Sorkin. Topics: Obama's Big Contradictions on Health Care, War & Peace and Economic Recovery; The Cultural Chasm on Global Warming.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Summers; Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and John Thune, R-S.D.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - A timely debate between Bjorn Lomborg and Paul Krugman on global warming. Plus a free-ranging discussion with a panel of stars on everything from Obama's Nobel Prize to what is happening in Dubai.

CNN's "Amanpour" - General Stanley A. McChrystal - commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

"Fox News Sunday" - Sens. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and James Inhofe, R-Okla.; Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Inez Tenenbaum, chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

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MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about the amendment passed by the House Financial Services Committee to allow an independent audit of the Federal Reserve. If Alan Greenspan is not happy about it, I take that as a good sign they did the right thing. It only took putting this country on the edge of financial ruin that we're not out of yet for the S.O.B. to ever admit he might be wrong about anything.

Ratigan: Alright first big newsmaker of the Meeting, Democratic Alan Grayson, better known for some of his fiery comments on Republicans and health care, now taking aim at the Federal Reserve along with so many others. He says the Federal Reserve is more secretive than the CIA, and his new amendment co-sponsored by Republican Ron Paul would allow the first ever independent audit of the Federal Reserve. The amendment edged out a competing proposal from North Carolina Congressman Mel Watt who wants to limit those very audits.

Congressman Grayson now joins the Morning Meeting. Your amendment approved by the House Financial Services Committee—a huge step forward. Where do you go from here and what’s your level of confidence Representative that you can continue to addendum behind this piece of legislation?

Grayson: Where we go is to stop the secret bailouts. There have been hints and hints now for more than two years that the Fed’s been conducting huge bailouts on the scale of hundreds of billions of dollars to favor large failed banks. Now we’re going to find out all about it, and we’re going to decide whether it’s good or bad.

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Frontline Oct. 20, 2009. The Warning:

In the midst of the 1990's bull market, one lone regulator warned about derivatives' dangers--and overnight became the enemy of some of the most powerful people in Washington.

You can watch the entire program on line here as well as additional invertiews with Brooksley Born, Gary Gensler, Michael Greenberger, Arthur Levitt and Joseph Stiglitz.

From Frontline's interview with Brooksley Born:

Q: What's the message that you're trying to spread now in the ashes of what happened in 2008 and '09?

BORN: I think we have to close the regulatory gap. ... We cannot afford as a society to go forward with an enormous unregulated market that poses this kind of danger because it’ll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps. ... We need to take a lesson from the existing futures markets where exchange trading has been safe. As much as possible of the over-the-counter derivatives market should be traded on a regulated derivatives exchange. The transaction should be cleared on a regulated clearinghouse. There should be robust federal regulation of any remaining OTC derivatives market. And personally, I think that remaining market should be limited as much as possible to no more than the customized contracts that are needed for specific businesses to hedge particular business risks. ...

Q: If this moment passes again, the consequences are what from your perspective?

BORN: I think we will have continuing danger from these markets and that we will have repeats of the financial crisis. It may differ in details, but there will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience.

Frontline also put together a video timeline of the events starting in 1987-today.

I highly recommend watching the entire hour at PBS's site, but here's one more portion I wanted to share here.

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Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told ABC's George Stephanopolous that the economic recession was nearly over. "We're getting very close," he said.

You know, I've been doing this Sunday morning shift for a few years now and I'm feeling a lot of sympathy for Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day. Every morning I wake up, and it's the same ol' participants and the same ol' conversations and the same ol' media bias. Look at this line up: Sen. John "I didn't get elected POTUS, but I'll get the Sunday shows!" McCain on State of the Union; former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on This Week (not to mention the ever-unbalanced and factually-challenged Michelle Malkin as part of the roundtable); National Economic Council's Larry Summers on both Face the Nation and Meet the Press and Senators Jim DeMint and Mike Pence on Fox News Sunday. Most egregiously, Tweety poses the question whether overt and extremist racism might actually help the Republicans. I can hardly stand it. Balance? A liberal perspective? Some journalistic integrity? Ha!

Doesn't it sound eerily familiar to pretty much every Sunday?

ABC's "This Week" - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Summers; former Reps. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., and J.C. Watts, R-Okla.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Eugene Robinson, Norah O'Donnell, Jennifer Loven, Howard Fineman. Topics: Why is President Obama losing public support for health care reform? Could racist talk from extremists help mainstream Republicans in elections? At the end of 2009, will Obama be viewed as a change agent? YES: 8 NO: 4; Will a handful of Senate Republicans vote for the final health care bill? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz; Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Will a new president help to stop the deadly downward spiral in Afghanistan? Fareed interviews the two candidates with the best shot at unseating President Karzai in this month's Afghan elections. Plus, is the U.S. government interfering in Iran? Spying? Supporting the opposition? Sending in radio and tv messages? All of the above?

"Fox News Sunday" - Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.; Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

Luckily, I got you babes to let us know what you see this Sunday morning. Leave your tips in the comments.

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We're learning more and more about the man who walked into the Holocaust Museum in D.C. this morning and opened fire on a guard.

First, more personal details from MSNBC:

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as James Wenneker von Brunn, 88, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, NBC News reported. NBC said he may have had connections to hate groups or anti-government groups.

... Von Brunn is believed to have had contact with law enforcement in the past, according to NBC. A D.C. Superior Court jury convicted a man by the same name in 1983 of attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board.

The case involved a 1981 incident in which police arrested Von Brunn at the board's headquarters carrying several weapons. He was convicted and later released from federal prison in 1989, records show.

What this tells us, of course, is that he was "sovereign citizen" -- just like Dr. George Tiller's assassin. If he was attempting a "citizen's arrest" of Alan Greenspan as far back as 1981, that almost certainly means he was an adherent of Posse Comitatus ideology, and very likely Christian Identity as well.

VonBrunn had a Website (now unavailable) where he promoted his online book, "Kill the Best Gentiles". Here's a screen grab:

Here's how he described his 1981 arrest:

In 1981 von Brunn attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest. He was tried in a Washington, D.C. Superior Court; convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal. He served 6.5 years in federal prison. He is now an artist and author and lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore."

I contemplated putting up the first six chapters of his book so people could see how far gone this guy is, but it's too vile. Here's a sample of his short work:

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I saw this NY Times article on Digby's site and it's just awful. As Edmund, a NY Times economic reporter, writes: If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I.

Read his personal saga of getting sucked into the mortgage crisis. It's riveting. I watched this thing from the start because I sold my house right before the mortgage lenders lost their minds and almost destroyed the world. They should have been the firewall that prevents the virus that infects the system, but they turned out to be the virus themselves.

If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.

But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds. We all had our reasons. The brokers and dealmakers were scoring huge commissions. Ordinary homebuyers were stretching to get into first houses, or bigger houses, or better neighborhoods. Some were greedy, some were desperate and some were deceived...read on

He was so honest about his financial situation and his relationship with his wife that it lends the article the kind of credibility talking heads on TV will never have.

And I agree with Digby:

This is one of the bravest articles I've ever read. But it's important to read how an intelligent, successful person could get themselves caught in the maw of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. It wasn't just a bunch of illegals lying on their mortgage applications. There was a whole industry devoted to seducing people into believing they could easily have things they couldn't afford. After all, our whole society was screaming at the time that you were a sucker for not getting in on the game. And everyone has some capacity for believing what they want to believe. It was a perfect American scam.

I rent these days and was lucky enough not to have destroyed myself before the fools gold rush began. If the financial experts got blinded by it, what chance did the average American family have against this massive financial con game?

Former Fed Chairman destroys Randian "free market" principles in 16 seconds.

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such as they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.

Well, exactly. You said one cotton-pickin', bailout-belying mouthful. Use this as evidence the next time someone brings up "Atlas Shrugged" as the best way to save the economy. Dean Baker thinks he misses the point:

What would Ayn Rand expect to happen? On the one hand we have the hot shot executives, on the other hand the schmucks who own stock in these banks. Would Ayn Rand expect that the executives would put aside their ambition, their lust for success, their greed, in order to benefit shareholders who are too dumb to even know what a credit default swap is?

Not for a second; Ayn Rand would watch the Wall Street big boys run roughshod over their shareholders' interests and be applauding them every step of the way. That is how the game is played. If Greenspan didn't think the Wall Street crew would rip off their shareholders for every last penny, then he was not a worthy disciple of Ayn Rand.

Meanwhile, the Bush Treasury Department redacts more bailout contracts.

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Mrs. Andrea Mitchell was trying very hard not to take any blame for the economic meltdown this country faces.

Waxman: shock. That sounds like to me you're saying that those who trusted the market to regulate itself, yourself included made a serious mistake.

Greenspan: Well I think that's true of some products, but not all.

Waxman: Then where do you think you made a mistake?

Greenspan: I made a mistake in the presuming that the self interest of organizations specifically banks and others was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders...

Waxman? Do you have any financial responsibility for the financial crisis?

(On his ideology)

Greenspan: ...to exist you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not and what I'm saying to you is "yes" I found a flaw...

He shucked and jived his way around this whole mess, but admitted I guess something. Who could have ever imagined that making millions of dollars a day with no oversight could possibly lead to greed and corruption and ultimate destruction?