The government bailout of AIG, at more than $180 billion so far, has primarily gone to pay off AIG's credit default swap obligations to counterparty gamblers Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America, the banks who believe they are "too big to fail". In effect, these institutions today believe they are so large that they can dictate the policy of the federal government. Some have called it a bankers' coup d'etat. It definitely is not healthy.

Geithner and Wall Street are desperately trying to hide this dirty little secret because it would focus voter attention on real solutions. The federal government has long had laws in place to deal with insolvent banks. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) places the bank into receivership, its assets and liabilities are sorted out by independent audit. The irresponsible management is purged, stockholders lose and the purged bank is eventually split into smaller units and when healthy, sold to the public. The power of the five mega banks to blackmail the entire nation would thereby be cut down to size. Ooohh. Uh Huh?

This is what Wall Street and Geithner are frantically trying to prevent. The problem is concentrated in these five large banks. The financial cancer must be isolated and contained by a federal agency in order for the host, the real economy, to return to healthy function.

This is what must be put into bankruptcy receivership, or nationalization. Every hour the Obama administration delays that, and refuses to demand a full independent government audit of the true solvency or insolvency of these five or so banks, costs to the US and to the world economy will inevitably snowball as derivatives losses explode. That is pre-programmed, as a worsening economic recession mean corporate bankruptcies are rising, home mortgage defaults are exploding, unemployment is shooting up.

This is a situation that is deliberately being allowed to run out of (responsible government) control by Treasury Secretary Geithner, Summers and ultimately the president, whether or not he has taken the time to grasp what is at stake.

"Was it a "good war"? Did waging it help anyone who needed help? Those where the basic questions that I hoped to answer when I began writing.

"I dedicate this book to the memory of Clarence Pickett and other American and British pacifists. They've never really gotten their due. They tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening. They failed, but they were right."

• Love Will Beat Your Brains Out (Not so good.)
  
• I Think I'll Drink Myself Into the Past
  
• I Got Tears in My Eyes From Lying on My Back Crying on My Pillow Over You
  
• Would Jesus Wear A Rolex on His Television Show (Maybe I just like the message, but I enjoyed it.)
  
• She Gave Her Heart to Jethro and Her Body to the Whole Danged World
  
• How Can a Whiskey Six Years Old Whip a Man That's 32?
  
• I Don't Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling
  
• Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth (Because I'm Kissing You Goodbye) (OK.)
  

"Since it was Bush who said that if the Democrats win America loses, I suppose the only remaining question is whether he'll fly to Pakistan to offer our surrender to Bin Ladin or invite Bin Ladin to come to Washington."

“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
And find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings"

-- Wendell Berry