Bankrupting the Nation for Fun and Profit

Charles Pierce, in re the bankruptcy of Montgomery, Alabama:

The inclination of many people, of course, is to read no further than "crooked local pols." What gets missed then, of course, is how these minor crooks got played by the big-league crooks in the financial-services sector, who look at other people's money the way other creatures look at carrion, and who look at people outside their industry as prey. Of course, Morgan found Jefferson County. It smelled easy money the way sharks smell blood, and of course it drained Jefferson County dry and threw away the husk. That is the system we have learned to tolerate, and even, in many cases, applaud. There is no excuse for the local pols. There is even less for the people who preyed upon them. The only sympathetic characters are the citizens of Jefferson County, the true marks, because what happened to them is what happens when you turn the country's economy into a casino and the country's governments into chips. This is also what happens when you look forward and not back.

Burn Wall Street to the ground and salt the earth so that financial speculation can never grow again. And put everyone who ever made a dime off a derivative in prison.