The e mails clearly indicate that the former top federal prosecutor in Arizona, Dennis Burke, informed  Holder’s aide Monty Wilkinson on December 15, 2010, the date of the murder of Border patrol Agent Brian Terry, that two AK-47 rifles sold through the Fast & Furious program to gun smugglers working with Mexican drug cartels had been used in the crime. They include Wilkinson’s response that the Attorney General had been informed.

The AK-47 used to kill Patrolman Burke was sold by the Lone Wolf gun store in Glendale, Arizona at the urging of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. The Los Angeles Times documents the background leading up to the shooting in in an article from September 11, 2011 entitled “Gun Store had misgivings about ATF sting“.

The ATF made a great show of installing cameras and wiretaps with the cooperation of the store owner. But there was never any effort made to trace the weapons. In fact, the straw buyer for the two AK-47′s found at the scene of the Terry murder was detained by immigration officials, who must have thought they hit the jackpot, crossing the border into Mexico carrying over 30 firearms including those very same AK-47′s. When they checked with ATF, they were instructed to allow the smuggler, Jaime Avila, to pass through despite extremely strict firearms regulations on both sides of the border. Avila was arrested 4 hours after the crime, so someone knew exactly where and who he was and how he was connected to the case.

In a speech in Cuernavaca, Mexico on April 2, 2009 Attorney General Holder stated that Operation Gunrunner was going to break the backs of the drug cartels. He mentions new wiretapping and intelligence initiatives as well as Gunrunner/Fast & Furious. Ironically, the funds for Operation Gunrunner were requested specifically by the Department of Justice and provided under the Stimulus Act. Supposedly AG Holder never read any of the memos or filings.

However, in sworn statements and in his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Holder denied knowing anything of Fast & Furious until a few weeks before  July 9, 2011. The transcript of his testimony contains the following exchange:

Congressman Issa: “When did you first know about the program? Fast & Furious? To the best of your knowledge what date?”

AG Holder: “I’m not sure of the exact date but I probably heard of Fast & Furious the first time in the last few weeks.”

Congressman Issa: “How about the head of the Criminal Department, Lanny Brewer? Did he authorize it?”

AG Holder: “I’m not sure whether or not Mr. Brewer authorized it, you have to understand in which the department operations, although there are operations this one has gotten a great deal of publicity.” (sic)

Dennis Burke, the U.S. Attorney in Arizona and the man most responsible for Fast & Furious, was the former Chief of Staff for then Governor Janet Napolitano, now Secretary of Homeland Security. Mr. Burke resigned abruptly from his position on August 30, 2011.

Ms. Napolitano and the President have been adamant that they have reduced the number of guns illegally exported via our southern border. Mr. Burke was the nexus of that supposed committment. The head of the criminal division at the Attorneys office in Arizona, Patrick Cunningham, who was Burke’s deputy and played a key role in Fast & Furious, has invoked his 5th Amendment rights in refusing to testify before Congressman Issa’s committee. He resigned his position yesterday.

And yet the Department of Justice has done its best to cover up and then intimidate whistle blowers such as ATF Agent John Dodson, who observed many of the transactions at Lone Wolf. In an article dated September 20, CBS News reported that an ATF agent recorded a conversation with Lone Wolf gun store owner that is at best, discombobulated. In the recording the ATF agent, Hope MacAllister, Dodson’s former supervisor, is told by the dealer:

“Leahy as we both know has adjourned this inquiry right now okay with no plans to reconvene it. So your people were successful on that end.”

He also then expresses his concern with Agent Dodson’s release of case files to the committees investigating Fast & Furious:

“He’s (Dodson) more toxic than you realize. I can tell you casue I asked him. How much of this f—–g file did you release?”

That Senator Leahy has effectively closed the Senate investigation is another data point in the political nature of the case.

Other ATF whistle blowers have been threatened as well. Human Events has done a good job in assessing the cover up.

So we now have a direct communication between the US Attorney and AG Holder’s Deputy Chief of Staff in which he admits that he informed the AG not only of the Terry murder but the link with guns used in Fast & Furious as well on the day it happened. We have evidence of a Senate cover up. We have evidence of a massive cover up by the Department of Justice. We have evidence that the National Security Council was regularly updated on Fast & Furious. This all good enough to take to a Grand Jury for indictments.

But it’s worse. By June 2010, 130 of the F&F firearms had been traced to crimes within the United States and 179 within Mexico. In one case alone, 40 were found in a raid on the home of the Sinaloa Cartel’s chief enforcer in Ciudad Juarez. Marisela Morales, the Mexican Attorney General, claims that over 200 murders in that country have been traced to firearms provided through fast & Furious, and that a Mexican Army helicopter had been shot down by a .50 cal rifle sold through the program. The murder of U.S. ICE Agent Jaime Zapata on February 15 of last year was traced to a weapon from the Fast & Furious program.  Agent Zapata and his partner, were ambushed and shot while driving from Mexico City to Monterrey.

That a single program has been the nexus for a massive crime wave is simply mind-boggling. That our media have chosen to largely ignore the facts is stunning. This case goes far beyond negligence.

The United States has never offered an explanation or an apology to Mexico. The drug cartels are still at war with the Mexican government with a toll that now stands at over 40,000 lives. Every excuse and rationalization provided by our top law enforcement officials for Fast & Furious has proven to be a hollow sham.

Our government has followed this up by doing its best to marginalize and destroy the careers of those trying to expose a program completely out of control while covering up complicity that goes right to the White House. It is time to assign a special prosecutor and then schedule a grand jury hearing with the intention to indict the highest officer of the law in the land along with every single wrongdoer along the way. Fast & Furious is a stain on our national honor and on the reputation of every officer sworn to uphold the law.

“Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.”

He states that capitalism must be reformed.

Across the world, President Barak Obama in a statement released by the White House on the 30th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision on abortion rights stated:

“we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”

In an article in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal entitled “The New American Divide” Charles Murray argues that there is a cultural divide that has never occurred in this country that threatens to rip the nation apart as its leaders and upper class become ever more insulated from the rest of the country. Single parenthood, long-term joblessness, and the loss of religion have all jumped to historic levels in the majority of the country while the Upper Class has become ever more isolated.

Rather than the American Way of the 1960′s we now have deeply divergent class differences that do not bode well for the democratic experiment.

I picked the references from Hr. Schwab and the president for a reason. It goes to the heart of the matter. The crisis we are facing was identified by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in its earliest form and by the social welfare driven policies of government over the past 50 years. It is the disintegration of both faith and family that is at the heart of the issue.

One can not have laws without morality. There has to be an underlying philosophical code to the social compact. As the Left and its institutions have sought to extirpate the Judeo-Christian basis for our Constitution and laws, the moral and ethical limits to wrong conduct have been severely weakened. The Jon Corzines and Angelo Mozillos and Newt Gingrichs and Nancy Pelosis begin to feel invincible. On a corporate level Apple and Nike disassociate themselves from the sweatshops in Asia producing their products, while General Electric and Goldman Sachs game to government and the system to the tune of billions. In a financial crisis based upon bad decision after bad decision after bad decision there were no consequences for those decisions. Any fines or settlements were paid out of other people’s money.

And this evening, we are to be lectured by the president on “fairness”. Every time I hear that term I know the system is once again being gamed. Fairness is equal treatment under the law. Fairness is equal opportunity. But the president has a very different idea of fairness.

How fair is it to take the life of a 7 month old fetus? According to the president’s own words, it is simply equal opportunity.There is something deeply disturbing about such a worldview.

Hr. Schwab considers the capitalist model to be outdated when in fact it is capitalism run wild, or rather cronyism, that is the issue.

The cultural divide outlined by Mr. Murray began when the social norms began to crumble in the 1960′s. In 1965 Moynihan identified the destruction of the African-American family as a national crisis. Trillions of dollars in social programs later, it would seem that society as a whole is unraveling.

For without core values, the center cannot hold. We don’t need more rules and regulations. The Federal Code is 80,000+ pages already. We do need common sense and a recognition of the common ethical standards, the Tao as C.S. Lewis put it, that underlies all else that we do.

Perhaps if our president did not engage in purposely misstating reality we could begin to recover our national soul. Perhaps if the bankers looked within, we could begin to recapture that which has made this country great.

1. The economic and military stakes related to our energy supply continue to rise. As we artificially constrict domestic energy production Teheran has continued to raise the stakes in the Straights of Hormuz. The control of the flow of oil is their primary weapon as Der Spiegel points out. This a threat to the global economy, not just our own. It will continue to be the primary flash point for conflict until we address our energy dependence pragmatically.

War is a very expensive proposition, and ever since the Great White Fleet a top concern of our defense establishment has been fuel resources. Today’s biofuels programs are politically correct but will do little to either reduce the military’s carbon footprint or strategic energy reserves. Continued reliance on unstable or uneconomic sources places our ability to defend our nation in jeopardy.

2 – On December 31, USA Today reported that gasoline and other petroleum derivatives have become America’s leading export industry at over $88 Billion in 2011. For the first time since the 1960’s, energy exports are leading the way and if allowed to grow, have the power to revive our economy.

3 – On December 27, the Wall Street Journal reported that the boom in shale gas production has spurred a race by the U.S. chemical industry to build petrochemical based manufacturing plants in places like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and elsewhere. Jim Fitterling, a VP at Dow Chemical, pointed out that the United States now has the lowest cost for natural gas outside of the Middle East. Petrochemicals are critical to the modern economy. From the clothes you wear to the drugs you take to the house you live in, to the food you eat these products are the backbone of the economy. And you can’t get them from solar or wind or geothermal power.

The United States is experiencing one of the biggest energy booms in its history in places like North Dakota and Pennsylvania and West Virginia and even New York. New and massive fields recently discovered offshore have reversed the decline in stated oil reserves for the first time in many years. The Alberta oil sand deposits are paying off after 30 years of promise. This sea change has the potential to create millions of manufacturing jobs. Jobs we desperately need.

4 – Our current administrations policies are strongly opposed to conventional energy production.  It has done every single thing it can to stymie these developments. From their program to block the Keystone XL pipeline to the invocation of the Jones Act to block drilling in the Cook Inlet to the EPA’s suspicious report (commentary here & here) on contamination at the Pavillion, Wyoming site to the 18 month delay imposed on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, our government has implemented a policy that will cause clear and present danger to our nation.

5 – From its investment in Solyndra to that in Fisker to the guarantees backing RFK Jr’s BrightSource Energy, the administrations track record of backing alternative energy programs has established a substantial record for cronyism and poor performance. These projects passed no technical or economic litmus tests but do make great sound bites.

We have a dangerous policy conflict that must be resolved. We have the opportunity to create a new wave of prosperity and a chance to reduce the potential for conflict or be relegated to the sidelines of history. It is common sense versus current government policy.

When faced with the facts one can draw some objective conclusions. First, many of our current policies are not working to resolve the critical issues facing the nation.

Second, as the Iranians raise the possibility of a combination of oil crisis and debt crisis we would  be hit with a 1-2 punch to the global economy.

Third, the Middle East is undergoing an earth-shaking change of its own and will be a very different place in the next decade. Whether these countries will be friendly or even stable is a deep concern. Unstable energy supplies equals unstable global security . Ten years of war and trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost have done little to address this prime issue.

In the meantime, the opportunity to turn the economy around, shield our country from some of these shocks, and create long-term well-paying jobs  is staring us in the eyes.We have been talking about energy independence and reducing our trade deficits for the past 40 years and we have a golden opportunity sitting right in front of us.

At a time when the majority of Americans seem to agree that our national debt is unsustainable and in itself a clear and present danger to our security as Admiral Mullen recently testified to Congress there has never been a better case for moving forward responsibly and rapidly on conventional energy exploitation.

Technology exists today to both safeguard the environment and extract natural resources more efficiently than ever before. But the Luddite manner and Gaia worship have got to go. An accelerated program to exploit North American natural gas and oil must become a national priority.

We have a window of opportunity to do the greater good for the many and even for our planet if we manage our resources well. We cannot afford to walk away from this one.

In a background interview given by one team’s equipment manager, he stated that white men in overalls, plain spoken and driving horse drawn buggies have been seen at a number of arenas around the country. Are the Amish moving in on the NBA, and why?

Some credit the recent lockout for the new trend. Many players with extra time on their hands in addition to physical conditioning spent many hours contemplating the implications of a lost season. Some also gave deep thought to an eventual post-NBA life where the late nights and nightclubs would fade away.

As expected, when asked Amish leaders had no comment except to say that “We live simply. Dress plainly, and reject pride, arrogance, and haughtiness. We accept the Will of Jesus.”

Whatever the reason, beards seem to the year’s biggest trend. That and jamming the lane.

I am not sure which is more offensive. A party held at the height of the recession that resonates of Marie Antoinette.

The cover – up by the White House.

Or the slavish connivance of a docile media.

The White House schedule is well publicized and extensive and is examined under a microscope daily by the media and by foreign powers. I’m sure the Chinese and MI5 knew and charged it down to the peccadilloes of a weak president. That not a single reporter thought to ask, and that even TMZ and E! with their armies of paparazzi missed this one is highly suspicious.

While Americans were losing their jobs and the economy was running aground, a worse example cannot be imagined of the petty abuse of the office and perquisites of the presidency. Unless of course it was the Majorca trip, or the Copenhagen trip, or the London trip. Any way you look at it our president and his spouse are livin’ large on our dime.

The White House under this administration has made its reputation for its lack of gravitas. As we fold our tents in Afghanistan and watch as our president creates straw men only to knock them down, there is a rising taste of bile in our collective gullets.

Having a party is no big thing, but the consistent and aggressive cover up is.

But we are being fed a false picture by the media. What wasn’t shown except on sites such as Youtube (courtesy of a student videographer, presumably one of the protesters) was the circumstances leading up to the incident.

The problem arises when, after having arrested a number of protesters, other protesters surround the police and deliver a threat. In a call and response reminiscent of kindergarten, the leader shouts “We will let you leave. If you let them free.” with the chant echoed by the crowd.

The police them inform several of the leaders of this leaderless movement that if they do not step aside they will be pepper sprayed. The protesters then chant “From Davis to Greece; F*$k the police.” The police seem rather bemused when the students begin to chant “don’t shoot students!” while continuing to block the path of the police. After repeated warnings, the protesters advise each other to cover their eyes.

The pepper spraying is rather anticlimactic. The police continue to order the protesters to move to the side as the crowd around the 10 or so protesters blocking the drive and the subjects of the pepper spraying screams and boos. The incident takes place over a course of 15 minutes, and there was no police brutality evident as defined in the manuals and guidelines.

Naturally, the chancellor of UC Davis, Linda Katehi, was forced to backtrack from her initial support of the campus police. Katehi was later quoted as saying “they were not supposed to use force”.

The chief of the force was placed on leave while an investigation is conducted and two of the officers involved were suspended.

Funny how those breaking the law have become so insistent upon its application upon those who were tasked to enforce it. I wonder how many of those same students protesting the tuition hikes are actually paying their own tuition?

In Los Angeles, the dope smoking, hobo convention, and gay sex in the latrines went unnoticed in the fervor to report on “the movement, man”. Up in Oakland Angela Davis, a violent revolutionary in the 1960′s once on the FBI’s Most Wanted list is a vocal supporter and her Communist zeal remains undiminished. She was joined by Congresswoman Barbara Lee and former Obama White House official and political lightning rod Van Jones. The “Occupy the Ports” plan was a cause looking for an issue, but no one was quite sure how it fitted and it fizzled rapidly. This seems to be a recurrent theme in the Occupy movement.

Today, Kiplinger released their rankings of the best tuition values at American universities and UC Davis came in as one of the top values, along with several of the other UC campuses. The juxtposition of this news and that of the protests might thus seem dissonant to a reasonable person.

There is an illogic loose in the world. The media write the story and cuts and pastes the narrative hoping that no one digs too deeply. The same propaganda techniques used successfully in the communist bloc during the Cold War are recycled and regurgitated. But the question remains half a year later “to support what”?

At least the Davis protesters had a specific grievance whether one agrees or disagrees. Overall the OWS Movement, if it can really be called a movement, has been a grab bag of  inchoate “no’s” to the status quo. A grab bag of grievances if you will. There has been no catalysis even after 6 months of intense among and between the protesters and constant media attention. A revolving parade of telegenic activists, all with their own agendas looking for “street cred” has not been able to help verbalize a coherent message. The “99%” have had an amazing run but are looking more and more like the <1%.

And so we have college students protesting a tuition hike most will never have to pay at a university that has been ranked as one of the best values for the quality of education in the world. It makes no sense at all, really. Much like the OWS movement and the media circus surrounding it. Maybe Shepard Fairey can make a poster like he did for Obama. Oh, he did?

Many of the violent crimes reported this year have been sensational. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and Federal Judge John Roll were targeted by a lone, crazed gunman and there were a number of other gruesome crimes. The Giffords/Roll shooting was brought to an end by a bystander. The Ft. Hood massacre on November 5, 2009, which killed 13 American soldiers and wounded 29 others was brought to an end by two base police officers using conventional sidearms and procedures. The warning signs for this terrorist attack, the first on American soil since 9/11, were ignored and yet it was the local cops on the beat who faced and dealt with a terrible crime.

Every case one can think of was resolved by conventional methods. And yet the police powers of government on a local and national level have been growing at an alarming rate. And despite a dissonant data base there is a growing trend towards militarization of police forces and of an invasive state security apparatus.

The concept of militarization of police forces in this country began with the Special Weapons & Tactics (SWAT) teams in Los Angeles in 1967 -68.  Its formation was a response to  events including the Watts riots of 1965, and the emergence of snipers such as Charles Whitman, who killed 13 people on the campus of the University of Texas in 1966; the rise of armed revolutionary groups such as the Weathermen and, later, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Eventually SWAT returned to a more traditional police role of hostage/barricade incidents and suicide intervention.

Prior to and concurrent with this, the FBI in its battle with communism regularly investigated American citizens and the Hoover Files became famous. Today they are known primarily for salacious tidbits in the files on celebrities such as John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe. It was a time with different mores and the democratic principles of the country were in a cold war with a real and formidable enemy. Such was Hoover’s justification.

With the fall of the Soviet Empire, instead of the “end of history”, the world was fragmented into dysfunctional states and many of the same pawns used during the Cold War turned their hands towards criminal operations. The drug wars became the new front for  law enforcement. Sometimes the gangs were as well or better equipped than the police.

Today, Afghanistan provides 90+% of the world’s heroin while the largest military action in the 21st Century takes place in that country, the opium poppies in many cases grow right up to the razor wire of American bases.  A de facto civil war is taking place between the government and the narcotraficantes in Mexico that has cost 36,000 lives.  Today the street prices of cocaine and heroin are at historic lows. It would seem that the War on Drugs is truly lost and that our government simply doesn’t care. And yet over $20 Billion/year is spent on the War on Drugs; most of it on law enforcement. This seems to be a very poor return on the investment.

On September 11, 2001 the jihad being waged against the West since the mid 90′s struck at the heart of the infidel empire and 3,000 civilians were murdered. Everything changed that day. The West invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq with the goal of defeating the jihadists. Over 10 years later there has not been a single successful attack on the United States. Attacks in the UK, Spain, and Indonesia were successful, but there has been a steady decline caused by greater global cooperation and information sharing as the primary differentiators.

Along the way a massive security infrastructure and bureaucracy was created. The Patriot Act authorized the broad use of enhanced surveillance techniques and intelligence gathering while including domestic terrorism under the scope of the intelligence services. To date the only truly domestic terror prosecution seems to have been a few retired white supremacists in Georgia. The Ft. Hood massacre was officially classified by the White House recently as a workplace related shooting.

A key provision of the Patriot Act was the expansion of the authority of the Department of the Treasury to investigate money laundering and yet the narcotics trade has risen from $321 Billion in 2003 according to the United Nations to an estimate of $500 Billion this year by the Center for Strategic & International Studies. In Afghanistan, hundreds of millions of dollars in cash are shipped out to banks in Dubai openly and with the government’s approval with no questions asked. The opium/heroin trade alone is estimated at $4 Billion/year which funds both the warlords on our side and the Taliban warlords. So Afghanistan is not only bleeding our military, but also our civilian population.

And  we now have a Department of Homeland Security that employs over 216,000. The Transportation Security Agency consists of over 58,000 of those employees. The Border Patrol is of equivalent size, while ICE employs approximately 20,500. In an address delivered by retired General Barry McCaffrey, he emphasized the real dangers of the War on Drugs and an out of control border. The criminal networks have become ever more sophisticated and now act as paramilitaries, destabilizing one of our most important allies. And yet the inward directed nature of much of our security establishment does noting to address real and present dangers.

The Wall Street Journal in an article entitled “Federal Offenses: law enforcement teams grow at government agencies” wrote on Saturday of the proliferation of heretofore nonexistent police forces in federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Commerce, Labor Department, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Agency, and many others who have the power to conduct investigations, seek indictments, or simply raid violators of even regulatory violations. Cases where armed agents have raided homes and workplaces have included the infamous Gibson Guitar raid for illegal wood; documentation errors on otherwise legal imports, and even the recent bycatch of a 881 lb. Bluefin Tuna by a New Bedford trawler. “Put the tuna on the ground and raise your hands”.

The Internal Revenue Service has been strong arming countries around the world to open their bank records not to trace narcotics cash or Russian mobsters, but income tax evaders. The “Stop On Line Piracy Act” (SOPA) and the recent NDAA Act, which is now law, have broadened the policing authority of the Federal government to a never before greater degree at a time when ordinary crime is decreasing. The SOPA  Act, in the words of one IT manager, would make our internet similar to China’s. The NDAA allows for the President to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects, including American citizens. The law then becomes a matter of semantics to the unprincipled.

In the meantime, corruption and cronyism have risen to a level not seen since the 1870′s.

Nat Hentoff has written extensively on the assault on civil liberties and on due process starting with many of the measures of the Bush Administration. This accelerated, according to Mr. Hentoff, under President Obama, who has concentrated power in the White House to an extraordinary degree. By avoiding Congressional approval and his own Executive Branch through the appointment of “czars” ranging from the auto industry to  regulation to ethics to climate to consumer affairs, the president has subverted the separation of powers repeatedly in an imperial presidency that is unparalleled.

Crime rates have been dropping for 20 years and yet today there is more danger to civil liberties posed by government than ever before. Our government continues to expand the definition of crime while approving special powers usually found in police states.

When Members of Congress urged the President to ignore their own branch of government during the recent Congressional debt ceiling debate and act by fiat or the insistence of some of those same Members of Congress on the recusal of Justice Thomas in the health care case before the Supreme Court, one can easily understand the danger of even a well intentioned government to its own people.

As the terrorism threat used to rationalize many of these powers has receded government power has never been greater or more at odds with the Constitution. In the meantime the narcoterrorism network which funds many those terrorist organizations, is on the sidelines. The law is at odds with itself. Our government has built an anti-Constitutional framework that can and will eventually be turned against our citizens. On one side we have our civil/criminal system, and the other the growing power of  Orwellian dysfunction. Think about it.

Schäuble: A political union was not an option in the 1990s. It certainly would have made more sense to get the two things going at the same time, which is what we wanted. But there was simply too much resistance to the idea.

SPIEGEL: In other words, you are secretly pleased about the crisis, because it forces the Europeans to close ranks politically?

Schäuble: That’s nonsense. I’m not pleased about the crisis. But in retrospect, it’s certainly true that every great integration step in Europe came on the heels of a crisis. It’s always been this way, and it could also be the solution today.

Franklin Raines and James Johnson, both good friends of Angelo Mozillo are mysteriously nowhere to be found. Jamie Gorelik, President Clinton’s former Deputy Attorney General, is not mentioned either. Nor is the wholesale whoring out of former Republican functionaries such as Newt Gingrich for millions of dollars in consultancies. It’s a bipartisan issue.

The fact is that both FNMA and the FHLMC (Freddie) have been run as political brass rings since the mid 1990′s.The stage was set when the Clinton Administration forced both lenders to provide more affordable (read “junk”) financing, hiving it off as derivatives. This was the first stage in the genesis of the financial crisis we are now facing. Fannie and Freddie were at the nexus of the subprime market and were the nexus of the derivatives meltdown that launched the 2007 Wall Street crisis.

In 2002 HUD reported that  “Following their mission to meet federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing goals, GSEs such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks) have striven to improve home ownership of low and middle-income families, underserved areas, and generally through special affordable methods such as “the ability to obtain a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a low down payment… and the continuous availability of mortgage credit under a wide range of economic conditions.” This accelerated Washington Mutual’s, Countrywide’s and others rush into mortgages that had no reasonable expectation of being paid back. These banks bought Congress wholesale, and the “Friends of Mozillo” program became famous. Fannie and Freddie eliminated the risk factor and the fraud was endemic.

So now, the executives at the helm in 2006 – 2008 have been indicted for securities fraud for allegedly misleading investors about the size of the companies’ risky subprime mortgage holdings. These were the people holding the bag for the fraud committed from 1998 onwards. In a way, they had no idea how pervasive the rot was and were learning as they went. The Washington desire to sweep problems under the rug also entered into the equation. The crisis began many years before.

The fact remains that the major players have taken a stroll. Like Mozillo, Kerry Killinger at WaMu, and so many other perpetrators of one of the greatest frauds in history the parties responsible for the crisis have escaped scot-free.  It is the denouement of a bipartisan insider con of massive proportions. Someone had to pay though and they rounded up the usual suspects.

As we watch one more plunderer escape with a bag of loot over his shoulder we must ask ourselves when enough is enough. We must hold those responsible accountable. The economic crisis had many contributing factors, but when the game was rigged for plunder from the beginning, we must hold ourselves accountable for having allowed our leaders to get away with the scam. We have met the enemy and he is us.

Germany’s voters have had enough, and her own Finance Minister is firmly opposed to further cash injections. So instead, Der Prime Minister is stuck trying to cobble together some form of financial union that no one really wants any part of. The traditional wariness of Germany’s intentions is a major factor, but the Golden Rule applies. He (or she) who has the gold makes the rules.

Despite even this gambit, there is no reasonable expectation that the crisis will be resolved. The last few days have seen Italy, Spain and even France come under pressure from the debt markets. Markets price in risk, and the belief that borrowing from future generations can sustain the social welfare state and archaic work rules of what has become increasingly a leisure class has been abandoned by those doing the lending. The can can no longer be kicked down the road. The can stops here.

So what next? A Super EU? If the original idea didn’t work out very well what is the point of replacing it with more of the same? Can the Southern Tier, which is rapidly moving northwards, learn to put their financial affairs in order? Can it be done in time to stave off an epochal change in the standard of living in those countries? Will they actually pay their taxes this time?

Human nature doesn’t change readily. The talk of economic union has not progressed to the next level, which is the fundamental restructuring of inherently weak economies.  In each case these economies have never been strong. Even under the Hapsburgs at the height of Spain’s colonial wealth, the economy was horribly mismanaged and the North – South divide in Italy is still at the root of many of the country’s social and economic problems. The leopard cannot change its spots.

And so Frau Merkel has a true conundrum. Italy and Greece have already accepted technocrats as Prime Ministers, but these men have no constituencies. They are merely expedient solutions to the immediate problems of replacing their predecessors who were too closely tied to the crisis. They have no political base and when cuts and deep structural changes are proposed will have no political support from any party. For entitlements when granted are virtually impossible to retract.

And after two World Wars Germany is still not trusted across the Continent. Frau Merkel not only must worry about the reaction in the 17 other countries that make up the Euro zone, but also the ten additional countries that make up the EU and do not have currency union. And despite 65 years of pacifism, it is highly doubtful that the German national identity, which only became such in 1867 when Bismarck unified the country, and which was reunified in 1989 at a cost of trillions of Deutsche Marks would be cast aside in favor of a trans – European identity. Especially when that chalice has been poisoned by fiscal irresponsibility.

Von Clausewitz posited the schwerpunkt, the critical moment in battle when decisive action can change the tide. But battles are fought by generals. While Frau Merkel might wish for a closer European Union with fiscal discipline, the array of politicians, bureaucrats and citizens of 27 countries against another new economic order emanating out of Germany is stronger and more stubborn. There is no leader with either the political capital or the will to do what would be necessary to impose their will upon Europe’s 350 million people, for this is the end game to such a strategy.

And so Germany is stuck as are we all in a highly imperfect and chaotic scramble for stability as the tectonic plates of the global economy shift once again.