Stacy Herbert nails what is wrong with the current order of things:

“(approx. 7:38) This is the class war that Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, has talked about–that his class is winning.  And part of it is because they’ve been able to push the risk onto the public.  And part of that is getting rid of the welfare state which used to protect these people.  Instead they have a welfare state for the banking system…”

This explains it all—the austerity, the foreclosure fraud, the bailouts, the fines instead of jail time.  It is simple misdirection, that time-honored technique of the street magician.  The corporate media—financed by its banking masters–has been trying to convince us for years that it is we the people who are the deadbeats, welfare queens, useless eaters, parasites, do-nothing leeches dragging down society when in fact it is the banking system to which all that invective really applies.

It’s like Gore Vidal (and others) have said:

In other words, this society we live in is purposely engineered—in plain terms, rigged—in favor of the wealthy—that is, those who are given the free money and/or can create the free money–but we are taught to believe that it is egalitarian.  And that is the fight that those of us who have seen through this misdirection face: convincing the rest of the people that we are essentially living a lie.  Which brings us to Neil Garfield and Living Lies, which recently featured a great article explaining the nature of the lie:

“Once upon a time a single income household could provide a decent lifestyle. Household income was solid and so was savings. Then something happened…the American economy was completely undermined by a simple fact: in an economy based 70% on the spending by consumers, the consumers didn’t have any money. The “fix” was to offer credit on an increasingly stupid basis to replace real earnings, real savings and real household wealth, and real household income. Instead, household debt increased gradually and then more stupendously in the late 1990’s and the lead up to the 2008 crash.”

[SNIP]

“It is all traceable to the decision in most companies to reduce or freeze wages and let the government make up the rest with food stamps or the banks make up the difference in available credit. This insanity looks good on paper at the beginning. But in the end, households run out of money, families break apart, people lose their homes to fraudulent foreclosures, while government adopts a policy that basically says that regardless of how the public was duped into accepting credit (under duress) in lieu of normally increasing wages, it is always the “borrower” who must bear the full weight of these mistaken policies and the failure of the American worker to make ends meet.”

Exactly—you are expected to take “personal responsibility” while the banks do not have to do any such thing.  You are allowed (if not forced) to “default,” while the banks are “too big to fail” and will never be allowed to default.  And why is that?  Because the government (which is really the banks themselves in disguise) requires you to make sure a bank default doesn’t happen, by paving the way for the banks to take your real assets (i.e. through foreclosure, other types of repossession), charge you the highest possible interest (while banks themselves enjoy ZIRP), and so forth.  This is done while the courts engage in the most awkward feats of legal gymnastics, which is the only way that this sort of thing can continue.

Garfield’s conclusion is spot-on:

“Going back to the previously successful policy of giving workers a fair share of the pie is the ONLY way out of this mess. Henry Ford understood that at the start of our economic revolution in America. He doubled worker wages while other car makers decried the move as suicidal. But he was right. He created a middle class that could afford to buy a lot of cars. By increasing wages, the workers were spending money throughout the communities in which they lived. Ford had both created and tapped into what we would later refer to as a consumer economy that drove 70% of GDP.”