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Well, I just got to spend ten blissfully Glenn-Beck-free days in China, which is probably the only place one can safely escape his wingnuttery these days. It's quite a different world there, and certainly nothing like what Beck himself frequently depicts it as (more on that later).

And what better way to reacclimate myself to the USA than to turn on Fox the afternoon of my return and watch yet another of Beck's patented eliminationist attacks on progressives -- followed the next night by yet another?

Ah, some things never change, do they?

On Monday, Beck continued his current theme that "progressives are a disease" by ripping into the effort to push health-care reform through Congress. He again warned that America was being destroyed from within by progressives:

Beck: I was, way back then, I said that America could never be destroyed from the outside. I remember the day that I said it because it was September 11th, and people were freaking out, and I was on my radio program and I said, militarily there is no equal, don't worry, if the world tries to attack us, and we've decided we're not going to bother with smart bombs, we'd control the world in a heartbeat, but that's not who we are.

Don't worry. The only way to destroy America is to rot it from the inside -- collapse our system from the inside. It's got to be one of us that brings us to our knees.

When I said that, I was trying to give hope to people. But I didn't have the full truth, because little did I know that there were people, our own countrymen, who are already here who are on the inside who actually want to do that -- bring our country to its knees. That's insanity.

... Progressives -- progressives are the ones that say you've got to rot America from the inside. You have to be inside in order to bring her down. It has been the plan the whole time. Make progress -- baby steps. Well, progress from where to what? From the Constitution to a democracy. We're not a democracy.

So now that it's happening, why is America surprised? They've been clear for a hundred years. Radical progressives are infecting America! By deceiving unsuspecting people on their true intentions!

A little later, he used the disease metaphor again to describe health-care reform:

Beck: What they're about to pass is not a tumor. Because the doctor can come over here and say, 'Yeah, there's a tumor here, and we've got to go in and cut this out.' I don't know if you can cut this tumor out. Maybe not. But you can try. But what they're about to pass is a bloodstream disease. It will be injected into our system and it will be incurable.

Then on yesterday's show, he continued (h/t Media Matters) to attack the health-care reform effort:

Beck: I think they're gonna pass this thing. They are gonna do whatever it takes to pass this, and they're not going to go the traditional way, they are gonna go the way of snakes and cockroaches. They're gonna crawl out in the cover of darkness, and they're going to pass this, make it happen one way or another.

In case anyone needs reminding, here's how I explained the nature of eliminationism in my last book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right:

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What a shame we didn't get to vote here, huh? Yes, despite some heavy-duty pressure (and the implied threat of being blocked from membership in the European Union), the tiny country voted no to a crushing repayment plan for the British and Dutch debts incurred by a failed Icelandic bank. That plan would have required each Icelander to pay around $135 a month for eight years — about 25% of the average family's salary:

REYKJAVIK, Iceland – Icelanders blew whistles and set off fireworks in the capital as referendum results Sunday showed they had resoundingly rejected a $5.3 billion plan to repay Britain and the Netherlands for debts spawned by the collapse of an Icelandic bank.

Voters in the tiny Atlantic island nation defied both their parliament and international pressure to display their anger at how their nation was being treated.

"This is a strong 'No' from the Icelandic nation," said Magnus Arni Skulason, co-founder of a group opposed to the deal. "The Icelandic public understands that we are sovereign and we have to be treated like a sovereign nation — not being bullied like the British and the Dutch have been doing."

[...] Britain and the Netherlands want to be reimbursed for money they paid their citizens with deposits in Icesave, an Internet bank that collapsed in 2008, along with most of Iceland's banking sector. Most ordinary Icelanders feel the repayment schedule was too onerous.

[...] The overwhelming margin reflected Icelanders' simmering anger at bankers and politicians as the country struggles to recover from a financial meltdown. President Olafur R. Grimsson — who sparked the referendum by refusing to sign the repayment deal agreed by Iceland's parliament — said Icelanders resented having to pay for the actions of a few "greedy bankers."

He said, however, the British and Dutch would get their money back eventually.

"The referendum was not about refusing to pay back the money," Grimsson told the BBC. "Iceland is willing to reimburse those two governments, but it has to be on fair terms."

Iceland, a volcanic island with a population of just 320,000, went from economic wunderkind to fiscal basket case almost overnight when the credit crunch took hold.

And you'll never in a million years guess how that happened! (Stop me if this sounds familiar.)

They became a free-market poster child. By deregulating the banking and financial sectors, in just five years, Icelanders saw their wealth increase by 45 per cent. The banks went from domestic lending to international financing, until foreign financing made up two thirds of their debt. Then it all collapsed.

The new left-of-center government has been trying to negotiate a plan to repay $3.5 billion to Britain and $1.8 billion to the Netherlands as compensation for funds that those governments paid to around 340,000 of their citizens who had accounts with Icesave, an Icelandic Internet bank that offered high interest rates before it failed along with its parent, Landsbanki.

Failure to settle the dispute could have repercussions for Iceland's economic recovery. The International Monetary Fund has agreed to loan Iceland $4.6 billion, and the agreement is linked to repaying its international debts.

[...] Many Icelanders remain angry at Britain for invoking anti-terrorist legislation to freeze the assets of Icelandic banks at the height of the crisis.

Oh yeah, about that last part. Iceland Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir has demanded an apology from the UK for freezing their assets. I wonder how long she'll have to wait?

I don't blame them for being furious. Even Icelandic companies that had nothing to do with their banks had their assets frozen by the U.K. government.

And of course, the International Monetary Fund is a flock of vultures. Their Structural Adjustment Programs usually increase poverty in the countries they "help," because one of the main conditions is that the governments sell off their national assets - usually to western corporations at fire sale prices.

So good for Iceland! Too bad our Congress doesn't have that kind of spine.

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It's now a fact: Whatever else the Tea Party movement may or may not have achieved, it can claim credit for at least one real phenomenon -- it has revived the far-right Patriot movement of the '90s.

We've been reporting it for the better part of a year now, and the New York Times recently confirmed it.

Now the annual report on "The Year in Hate" from the Southern Poverty Law Center has the numbers to back it up:

Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight.

The anger seething across the American political landscape — over racial changes in the population, soaring public debt and the terrible economy, the bailouts of bankers and other elites, and an array of initiatives by the relatively liberal Obama Administration that are seen as "socialist" or even "fascist" — goes beyond the radical right. The "tea parties" and similar groups that have sprung up in recent months cannot fairly be considered extremist groups, but they are shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories and racism.

“We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in United States history,” Chip Berlet, a veteran analyst of the American radical right, wrote earlier this year. "We see around us a series of overlapping social and political movements populated by people [who are] angry, resentful, and full of anxiety. They are raging against the machinery of the federal bureaucracy and liberal government programs and policies including health care, reform of immigration and labor laws, abortion, and gay marriage."

Mark Potok, the author of the report, went on the Dylan Ratigan show yesterday on MSNBC to discuss it:

Ratigan: Mark, have you ever seen numbers like this?

Potok: Not in my tenure doing this work. I've been doing this close to 15 years, and I haven't seen anything like this.

I mean, the comparison, of course, is to the '90s, when we saw so much activity from militias and other anti-government 'Patriot' groups. And of course that's the sector of the radical right that we're really saying has exploded over the last year.

Uh, a minor correction to what you said -- the growth in hate groups, real race-based groups, 55 percent, has been over the last decade or so. That's slowed a bit. But when you look at the whole grouping of the various kinds of groups on the radical right -- extremist nativist groups, Patriot groups and hate groups -- it's astounding. We've seen an overall growth of something like 40 percent. All together, those three strands of the radical right are really the most volatile elements out there, and they amount to something like 1500 groups. It's quite amazing.

It's also worth noting what the report itself says about how this explosion has occurred:

As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn). Beck, for instance, re-popularized a key Patriot conspiracy theory — the charge that FEMA is secretly running concentration camps — before finally “debunking” it.

Yep. As we've been saying ...

Here's Potok discussing the report in more detail:

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George W. Bush's former campaign director appeared on NBC Sunday to defend his record on the economy. According to Karen Hughes, Bush rescued the economy from collapse.

Speaking about President Barack Obama's successes, Mark Halperin praised the current president's handling of the economy. "I think an extraordinary job as John said under difficult circumstances. He managed the economic crisis, kept the world from going into depression," said Halperin.

But Hughes quickly took objection to Halperin's assessment. "I have to disagree with you, Mark, about rescuing the economy," she said. "I think that happened before President Bush left office when they took the action that they did on TARP."

The sickness known as "teabaggers" are preparing another shameful display of their utter contempt for the American people.

Via Digby:

This is lovely:

So here’s the plan. On Tuesday, December 15 at 8:45 AM thousands of us will meet in Washington, DC at the fountain in Upper Senate Park. From there we will march to the Senate offices, go inside, and demonstrate our opposition to the government takeover of health care. We call this plan “Government Waiting Rooms”. The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. Many of us plan to stay there until they force us to leave. A backup location for this demonstration will be announced if they block us from entering the offices.

We need as many of you as possible to be there to make our point loudly and clearly. Please make plans to attend. We know it’s a sacrifice to do this right before Christmas. But throughout history American Patriots have made far greater sacrifices than this to protect our liberty. Now the burden (and the honor) falls on us.

Of course, they don't actually have to stage some demonstration of the horrors of health care rationing. We have examples of exactly that happening in real life right this minute. Here's one in Kansas City

--
Maybe these teabaggers think that those people don't count and that somehow they'll personally all be spared from these circumstances if they lose their jobs or get sick. I hope for their sake it's true. But the truth is that among those who are staging this little stunt, it's extremely likely that a percentage of them are going to be participating in this rationing in real life at some point. And there is no way of predicting which ones it will happen to. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...

When karma hits, these psychos will surely face the same fate as all those Americans who went to the Kansas City Free Clinic. Someday they will witness the health of people they care about collapse, and without decent insurance, and they won't be laughing about it. But they are so hypnotized by the wingnut propaganda that when their own loved ones face the same fate at a later date, they then will blame the federal government for doing nothing. These are dangerous idiots.

Oh what fun: Jon Stewart rips into Glenn Beck for his manifest lack of ethics in promoting gold as an investment on his program.

YahooNews's Brett Michael Dykes explained it in some detail:

For some time Beck critics have cried foul over his relationship with Goldline International, a precious metals vendor that features the TV and radio host's endorsement prominently on their website. Critics charge that Beck is guilty of misleading his audience by often advising them to purchase gold in advance of the potential collapse of the value of the dollar on the world currency market, without disclosing that he is in fact a "paid spokesman" for Goldline. Beck's on-air promotion of gold, which includes advising viewers to construct "fruit cellars" and to rely on a "three G system" of "God, Gold, and Guns" in the event of America's collapse, dates back to his time as a host for CNN Headline News.

Glenn Beck also regularly talks up gold on his nationally syndicated radio show, where he often endorses Goldline during live commercial segments. Additionally, Beck has had the company's CEO on as a guest. Advertisements for Goldline are also featured prominently on Beck's own website, where he recently promoted gold in an audio clip warning of an apocalyptic future:

When the system eventually collapses, and the government comes with guns and confiscates, you know, everything in your home and all your possessions, and then you fight off the raving mad cannibalistic crowds that Ted Turner talked about, don't come crying to me. I told you: get gold.

And as James Rainey explained at the LA Times, he may be leading a lot of people down a financial garden path:

Beck, true to form, has not been subtle in making his pitch. He has appealed to listeners to "think like a German Jew" during the period of Nazi ascendance. "I think people are running out of options," he said, "of something that could be worth something at all."

The alternative? Gold. Beck touts his personal investments in the metal and, though he has offered cautionary notes, he leaves no doubt about his bottom line.

"If you have been watching for any length of time and you still haven't looked into buying gold, what's wrong with you?" Beck asks on a video on his personal website. Those not following his advice, he adds, are "nuts."

Buying gold during economic hard times is not, to be sure, a new concept. In the current recession, it's a strategy that has been embraced by many mainstream investors.

My colleague Tom Petruno has written of how some economic wizards -- including David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, predictor of last year's financial swoon -- have replaced some of the cash in their portfolios with gold.

But even some of those who have been making lots of money selling gold concede that the appeal goes beyond mere reason. Peter Epstein, president of Merit Financial Services, told Politico that his firm had advertised on CNN but that the gold message resonated more with Fox's viewers "because it's the angry white man audience -- it's the conservative audience. . . . They are distrustful of the government, of the regime."

That sort of thinking might not lead to the soundest decisions, some gold professionals told me.

"When people buy into the fear and flock into one thing, it's only a matter of time before it turns," said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at Chicago-based LaSalle Futures Group. Indeed, since last week's high of $1,218, gold had dropped Tuesday to $1,143, Zeman noted, adding: "I think the wheels could really come off the gold bandwagon."

Actually, Beck is promoting Ron Paul's extremist brand of libertarianism by promoting the "gold standard." It's been a sucker play for the Far Far Right for many years, and now it's being promoted by a mainstream news entity.

Snail Mail:

Crooksandliars.com

POBOX 66310

Los Angeles, CA 90066

Via Raw Story. You know, I not only want the money back, I want these people put in jail. They took the money and ran from their own culpability:

The CEOs of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the two investment banks that collapsed during last year's financial meltdown, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation even as the company's shareholders lost everything, says a new report from Harvard Law School.

The top five executives at Bear Stearns made a total of $1.4 billion from bonuses and equity sales between 2000 and 2008, while the top five executives at Lehman Brothers made around $1 billion during that same period -- the period during which the companies ran up the bad investments that would see them collapse in 2008, according to "The Wages of Failure" (PDF), a report from Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance.

"The people who invested in these companies should feel betrayed," Nell Minow, a compensation expert at the Corporate Library, told NBC's Lisa Myers. "The whole idea of capitalism is that the people provide the capital and the executives take care of it for us. In this case, the people provided the capital, and the executives took it."

Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne personally made $388 million in the eight-year period leading up to the bank's collapse, while Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld made $541 million. Bloomberg news service notes that "shareholders who held their shares throughout the period analyzed in the report lost most of their initial investment."

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Glenn Beck's shows have become so full of wingnuttery these days that it's really becoming hard to keep up (though Media Matters does a great job of that anyway). It's such a constant barrage of right-wing extremism that the bigger picture gets lost in the onslaught.

The kind of wingnuttery Beck is embracing -- and promoting -- is a product of the kind of politics that now has conservative America in its thrall: right-wing populism. And it's not just Beck -- it's Sarah Palin, the Tea Parties, and the broad mainstream of the American Right who are careering down this path.

Take this prime moment in yesterday's Beck show as an example. Beck -- being our Fearmonger in Chief, as usual, with handy chalkboard in hand -- told the audience that we have three potential economic outcomes facing the USA: Recession, Depression, or Collapse. In other words, Disaster, Doom, or Total Annihilation. It was, as always, an uplifting scenario. He also described how we normal folks respond at each step. Paying off our debts, building fruit cellars, that sort of thing.

Then he got to the third one:

Beck: The third one is Collapse. That's 'Get out of debt and save,' plus, 'Have a fruit cellar,' plus -- I like to call the "three G system" here for this -- it's, uh, God, Gold, and Guns.

Now personally, you might take God and put him as an umbrella over the whole thing. And then you got your gun and your gold down here too. But that's your choice.

"God, Gold and Guns" has quite the ring to it, doesn't it? And the thing about it is, it could stand in all three aspects as the Battle Cry of Right-Wing Populism -- not just now, but as we've known it for most of the past thirty years and more. Before Beck, there was the Posse Comitatus, and the militias, and the Ron Paul wing of the GOP -- all right-wing populists, and all focused largely on the mythology of right-wing "constitutionalism", whose three great appeals to the masses have revolved around embracing the notion of a "Christian nation," returning the U.S. to the gold standard, and defending gun rights.

The third segment of Sarah Palin's interview with Bill O'Reilly also aired last night, and the subject, indeed, was right-wing populism:

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Palin: If there is a threat at all that perhaps I represent, it is that the average, everyday, hard-working American, that their voice is going to be heard, and their -- what our voice is saying right now is, we're telling the federal government, and we're telling the elites who think that they are -- can and should call all the shots for all the rest of us. Trust us in that we know what our federal government's role is supposed to be in our lives, it's supposed to be minimal.

O'Reilly: But that sounds logical. That doesn't offend me.

Palin: That's why it's perplexing as to why I would be, you know, kinda clobbered left and right --

O'Reilly: You don't know -- really. You're sincere about you don't know why you're the lightning rod, you don't know why?

Palin: Only if it is because I'm representing a normal American who is --

O'Reilly: Well, why don't they like normal Americans? Why don't the New York Times like normal Americans, or NBC News? Why should they have disdain for the regular folks?

Palin: Because I think that, obviously they wanting so much control over our lives, I think perhaps there is a little bit of threat there, that the average American is gonna rise up and our voice is going to be louder and louder, and we're going to tell our government, 'No, we expect you to work for us, we're not going to work for you, we expect things to turn around here quite quickly,' even if that means the elites are not gonna be in control anymore.

I'm talking about the media, I'm talking about those that are in bureaucracy that are calling the shots for us -- I -- that's why the Tea Party movement, I think is beautiful. And I think that it is, it is empowering for so many of us to be watching what's going on with the Tea Party movement where we saying -- 'That's -- that's me!' I think it's beautiful what's going on right now. And perhaps that is threatening to some who don't want to cede any control.

O'Reilly: I think that's a good analysis, but what I get from talking to you for the past hour is that you, Sarah Palin, want to lead that movement. You want to lead it.

Palin: I do not need a title, and I do not necessarily be the one to lead it, I don't -- need to --

O'Reilly: You -- no spin. You want to lead that populist movement. I can see it in your eyes. You want it.

Palin: I'm willing to assist. I know in my heart and soul that the experiences that I have gone through -- I believe that's all been kind of put together in my life -- can benefit the average, everyday, hard-working American because I have been where they are. I'm experiencing what they're experiencing. And I'm willing to assist, but again, I don't have to be the top dog.

This is all fitting, of course, because the the April 15 Tea Parties really signaled the takeover of the American Right by its populist wing. And Palin, of course, had established herself as a right-wing populist well before the parties began, during the 2008 campaign.

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From Bill Moyers Journal, Simon Johnson paints a bleak picture of what's ahead for us due to Washington's unwillingness to regulate the financial industry and Wall Street.

BILL MOYERS: You asked on your blog, just this week, a question I want to put to you now, and to both of you. You asked, 'Does this crisis reflect something about the disproportionate influence of a few incompetent investment bankers or a deeper breakdown of capitalism?'' What's your answer to your own question?

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, definitely, this disproportionate influence of some fairly incompetent bankers, that's for sure. That's what we're seeing today. That's what we've seen over the past few months. I think on the issue on the issue of capitalism, we have to take this very seriously. To me, at least, the financial part of our capitalism is very seriously broken.

They persuaded us to allow them to take incredible risks. And then they pushed all the downside, all those losses onto us, the taxpayer, at the same time as really hammering hard all the people who were duped, essentially, into taking out loans. People lost their houses. It's an absolute tragedy. This combination cannot go on. And yet, the opportunity for real reform has already passed.

And there is not going to be not only is there not going to be change, but I'll go further. I'll say it's going to be worse, what comes out of this, in terms of the financial system, its power, and what it can get away with.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

SIMON JOHNSON: That's the.

BILL MOYERS: Why is it going to how is it going to be worse?

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, there's four we used to have a dozen or so substantial big banks, now we're down to four. Now we're down to four big banks that have a lot more market power and a lot more political power. They make the campaign contributions. They shape agendas in ways that are that are really quite scary.

If you look, for example, at derivatives. And the debate on whether or not derivatives should be regulated in a sensible manner. And at this point, actually, the Obama Administration has is leaning in a better direction. But the big financial players are absolutely against any kind of sensible regulation. And I think they're going to win.

From The Daily Show:

President Obama takes a soft pedal approach to reform when addressing a humbled Wall Street.

I agree with Stewart. A year later and we're still talking about reform in the future tense instead of the past tense? Shameful.

Citizens for Tax Justice point out what I was saying just the other day: We only hear all this crying and moaning about the deficit when it's something for regular working people, and not a powerful lobby. And of course, the Republican'ts are right out there in front of the Hypocrisy Parade:

And yet, many of the lawmakers who argue that the health care reform legislation is “too costly” are the same lawmakers who supported the Bush tax cuts.

Their own voting record demonstrates that health care reform is not a matter of costs, but a matter of priorities.

It’s difficult to see how the Bush tax cuts could provide us with two and a half times the benefits of health care reform. In 2010, when all the Bush tax cuts are finally phased in, a staggering 52.5 percent of the benefits will go to the richest 5 percent of taxpayers.

President Bush and his supporters argued that these high-income tax cuts would benefit everybody because they would unleash investment that would spark widespread economic prosperity. There seems to be no evidence of this, particularly given the collapse of the economy at the end of the Bush years.

The tax legislation enacted under President George W. Bush from 2001 through 2006 will cost $2.48
trillion over the 2001-2010 period.

This includes the revenue loss of $2.11 trillion that results directly from the Bush tax cuts as well as the $379 billion in additional interest payments on the national debt that we must make since the tax cuts were deficit-financed.

[...] Over the upcoming decade (2010-2019), the costs of the health care proposals approved by three committees in the U.S. House of Representatives are projected to be around $1 trillion. (One committee trimmed the costs of its health care bill below that amount, but an official estimate of the cost reductions was not available at the time of this writing.)

The chairmen of the three House committees have explicitly stated that their goal is a final bill that
is deficit-neutral in the decade following enactment.

It’s unclear if they have accomplished this yet, since the Congressional Budget Office has not yet issued final cost estimates of the bills, and the legislation is likely to change before the full House votes on a final bill. But President Obama and
Democratic leaders have also committed to ensuring that health care reform will not increase the budget deficit.

Under the House bills, roughly half of the costs would be offset with savings in our existing health care programs, while the other half would be offset with a surcharge on the incomes of wealthy taxpayers.

In contrast, President Bush and his allies in Congress never even attempted to replace the revenue lost as a result of their enormous tax cuts. The Bush tax cuts were deficit-financed, which increased the national debt and resulted in greater interest payments on that debt, as already explained.

These figures make clear that costs cannot be the real concern of lawmakers who oppose the House health care legislation and yet supported the Bush tax cuts. Their position seems to be that showering benefits on the wealthiest five percent of taxpayers and leaving the bill for future generations is preferable to making health care available for all at a much lower cost and paying that cost up front. That demonstrates a different set of priorities than most Americans have, but it doesn’t demonstrate much concern about costs.

This is interesting. The administration's new regulation proposal contains procedures that will essentially quarantine financial companies in trouble, making it easier for the feds to step in and isolate problem operations. The devil, of course, will be in the details:

They are the biggest of the big — the Citigroups, the Goldman Sachses, the AIGs and other financial behemoths. The Obama administration doesn't want so many around anymore.

Financial regulations proposed by the president would result in leaner and simpler institutions that don't carry the weight of the system on their marble columns.

Around Washington and Wall Street they have come to be known as TBTF — too big to fail. It's not just size, though. These companies are so far-flung, so intertwined and so precariously leveraged that a single one's collapse can create systemwide tremors that imperil the finances of millions of Americans.

With that fear in mind, the government stepped in to bail out Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and American International Group Inc. with tens of billions of public money last year.

Looking to avoid such a costly intervention, President Barack Obama's regulatory plan calls for large, interconnected companies to pay a heavy price for the systemwide risk they pose.

So far, however, congressional debate has centered on the administration's plan to put the Federal Reserve in charge of these "systemically significant" companies. Less attention has focused on the potential effect on the institutions and the financial system's hierarchy.

Under the administration's proposal, companies such as Citi, Goldman Sachs and others in a broad top tier engaged in complex transactions would face stricter scrutiny and have to hold more assets and more cash as cushions against a downturn.

Continue reading »

This comes out just two days after my birthday. Guess how I'm going to celebrate?

Michael Moore wants his money back. Actually, he wants your money back, if you lost any in the financial meltdown.

And though he knows that probably won't happen, the filmmaker at least wants to stick it to the people who took it.

The still untitled film, which opens Oct. 2, will zero in on the corporations and politicians he says caused the global financial crash.

Wall Street robber barons are Moore's new on-screen enemy.

"The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it's going to be more like a vampire movie," the filmmaker jokes. "Instead of the main characters feasting on the blood of their victims, they feast on the money. And they never seem to get enough of it."

When the collapse walloped the country last September, Moore says he knew not only that it would matter to regular people, but also that the inherent decadence was ripe for his style of satire.

"If you go to see my movies, even if you don't agree with everything in the movies, you're going to have a good laugh," Moore says. "I want them to walk out at the end saying 'Wow, that was something!' And in this case, maybe they also walk out asking the ushers, 'Um, excuse me. Where are the pitchforks and torches?' "