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Our Consumer Plutocracy

 We Americans dwell in a consumer plutocracy, and the plutocrats don't even bother to be cute about it any more. Barack Obama, hailed by the geniuses of new media as a populist saviour, has surrounded himself with a team that was already bought and paid for by the financial services industry before they ever walked into the White House.

Larry Summers collected $5.2 million last year from his part-time job with a hedge fund.

$5.2 million for a part-time job!

One day per week!

"And just in case you ever get a big job in Washington, Larry, remember who your friends are!"

George W. Bush remembered his friends who paid him $15 million on a $600K investment in a baseball franchise, and Barack Obama remembers his friend Penny Pritzker, the Queen of Sub-Prime Lending, chief financial officer of his Senate and Presidential campaigns, and Rahm Emanuel remembers his friends among the investment bankers at Wasserstein Perella, who paid him $16.2 million for two years of "work," and it isn't easy to figure out exactly what "work" that was, because Rahm Emanuel was a speech and communication major at Sarah Lawrence and Northwestern, and never had any training whatsoever in accounting, or business, or finance... but he always knew how to follow the money, as a fundraiser for Richard Daley and Bill Clinton, and now Rahm has followed the money all the way to his current job as Chief of Staff and gatekeeper outside the Oval Office.

"If you ever get a big job in Washington, Rahm, remember your friends!"

And the friends remember, too. They remembered Bill Clinton for signing Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and paid him $40 million