TruthSavvy.

The emerging bank reform legislation might be viewed in a singularly positive light if the reforms were not the byproduct of a skewed capital system that made several million Americans undeservedly powerful and rich while Congress slept. One could feel downright hopeful about the future of American banking if moral hazard had not contaminated the land. But too much polluted water has gone under the bridge. The good in the reforms is counteracted by the poisons that produced the need for remedial interventions.

If experts are ruining the world, to whom do we turn? Plutocrats? Special interests and their politicians? The uneducated masses? Organized religion run amuck? Ancient philosophers? Or something else? It’s time for America and the world to get serious about the foundations of good governance. Change is coming like a locomotive. We need to understand good governance before the momentum of confusion railroads us to disaster.

David Weidner provides a valuable public service in his insightful fictional account of Warren Buffett’s creeping (moral) blindness. Making billions — tick, tick, tick — by sleeping with the enemy is no American ideal. Seeking to prosper justly in ways constructive to the nation’s sustainable well-being and economic independence is a laudable ideal — an ideal that Buffett, perhaps, is forgetting as he tries to explain away some of Wall Street’s sins.

Has America lost its soul? Is America too immoral and shortsighted to allow prudent capitalism to work properly? (Yes.) Is the Canadian hedge fund manager, Erick Sprott correct that the U.S. government is now a “dead man walking,” with central bank intervention the main dynamic that allows the U.S. Treasury to roll over government debt at low interest rates? (Marketwatch, Oct. 20, 2009).

All right, not everything in today’s Farrell commentary is erudite or even proportional. Nevertheless, he does make some valuable points. It is apparent that America is setting up various disgruntled interests in the world to make war with us. The U.S. decision to monetize debts in the face of a deepening recession is problematic. Quantitative easing (as it is called) will expose our international friends, competitors and enemies to economic complications as our U.S.

Who, if anyone, is surprised that Mr. Stanford’s chapter unfolds in Madoff-ite fashion, politics and all? Who, if anyone, does not expect bailouts and partisan subsidies to continue, with justice thrown to the wind as evidenced in the expanding mortgage subsidy affair?

The American economy could operate more safely by looking to the essentials in Aesop’s Fables than by following Irwin Kellner. Mr. Kellner’s spending advice might pump up the stock market for a short time — long enough to allow elites to dump unwanted holdings at better prices — but would serve to weaken the U.S. relative to other nations like China. Furthermore, added borrowing will increase the national calamity once there is insufficient demand for Treasuries to support the public debt.

One war is over. Another one begins. The war to save America from plutocracy was lost this week as the federal government capitulated to financial sector demands for fresh capital and more bailout guarantees. Naturally, the Bush and Obama administrations don’t see themselves as losing the financial war. But they’re two of a kind when it comes to Wall Street. Just consider Obama’s willingness to work the phones to U.S. Senators to secure more money for financial elites.

Some market observers opine that we ought to be thankful for the fiscal stimulus provided by Paulson’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). They argue that the U.S. economy would be in a deep hole without TARP. Probably. But that deep hole might be a better spot than the deeper pit of lost governmental legitimacy we now find ourselves in as TARP socializes the investment errors of wealthy speculators. It may be that the Secretary of the Treasury’s radical action will help us skirt a severe recession and even partially re-inflate capital assets in the near term.

David Weidner says that the 2008 crash has Americans wanting to loot Wall Street castles since Wall Street looted their homes. The good news is that Weidner counts himself among those who are angry with Wall Street. The bad news that he reads too much “revenge” into the public mind and not enough respect for the sanctity of real justice.