"Public Enemies Run, and Rob, Our Banks"

"Yes, two Great Depressions linked in a mysterious time-warp: Bank robbers and robber banks. Back in the dark days of the first Great Depression John Dillinger was admired, a dapper Robin Hood. Banks were the real villains. Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, "Pretty Boy" Floyd, and "Machine Gun" Kelly were the "American Idols" of their day - "Public Enemies" to the FBI. But folk heroes to an angry public who cheered when Dillinger destroyed bank records during holdups.

Yes, good ol' John cared for the little guy, our "stand-in," a secret way of getting back at the crooks running America's banks. Imagine him storming into a bank in a three-piece suit sporting a Tommy gun. In broad daylight! A real man. He leaps over a counter confronting a scared teller, gently taps a stack of bills with his gun barrel: "That's your money, mister?" He nods. "We're here for the bank's money, not yours. Put it away." Banks were easy pickings for Dillinger, strategies he picked up in the slammer: "They ain't tough enough, smart enough, or fast enough. I can hit any bank I want, any time. They got to be at every bank, all the time." And he cleaned up, till a friend ratted on him.

Today it's far worse. Back in the 1930s we got a flood of new laws and regulations protecting small investors and consumers. Today we just got Obama's proposed new legislation that's already being watered down by Wall Street lobbyists. How? Easy. Because today's new Dillingers are inside the system, officers and bureaucrats running the banks, regulators, monetary system, government. The usual suspects: "Pretty Boy" Paulson and his Goldman Gang, "Helicopter Machine Gunner" Bernanke, "Bonny" Dodd and "Clyde" Geithner. They're the new "Public Enemies," calling the shots from inside, robbing us blind, costing us trillions. Worse yet, the new president loves the new Dillinger Gang. Like the Depression-era masses, he's mesmerized by the bank robbers, and hired them!

Modern Dillingers own the banks, and government. How bad is it? Real bad: Remember former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, who stood up for the little guy in the '90s? The guy who once attacked banks with this comment: "America's investors have been ripped off as massively as a bank being held up by a guy with a gun and a mask." Well, he's inside too, just hired as a "policy adviser" by Wall Street's Goldman Gang, just weeks after Goldman hired away the top staffer on the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. The pattern's obvious: Wall Street's arming itself with vast lobbying firepower to kill off much of the proposed regulations, just as they did during the Enron and mutual fund scandals reform movement earlier this decade.

And that, my dear friends, is why today's Wall Street conspiracy of banks and lobbyists, their well-paid pals in Congress and throughout the federal bureaucracies and regulators, plus their Trojan Horses in the White House, will continue driving America straight into the third meltdown Robert Shiller warns about: Our "vulnerability to bubble thinking is greater than it's ever been ... We recently lived through two epidemics of excessive financial optimism ... the dot-com and the subprime ... we are close to a third episode."

The rapidly-approaching "third episode" became painfully obvious in reading Black Swan author Nassim Taleb's idealistic "Ten Principles for a Black Swan-proof World" in the Financial Times. Idealistic, yes, but drenched in satire. Satire because we know the new Dillinger Gang, the Goldman Conspiracy and their allies all across Wall Street, could never steal as much money from taxpayers in Taleb's utopian "Black Swan-proof" world.

So Wall Street will surrender nothing, and, therefore, every one of Taleb's 10 Black Swans remains intact, a time bomb, a disaster waiting to happen. Here's why:

BS-1. Don't give the recovery to the same idiots who created the mess. Taleb was more colorful: "People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it), should never be given a new bus." There were so many drivers it is "irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess." But we have. And they will fail to create a "Black Swan-proof world."

BS-2. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Get rid of losers early, while small, warns Taleb. Unfortunately, bankers are so greedy they're already spending millions on lobbyists and political donations to do just the opposite. They love "big." So count on endless loopholes undermining new regulations.

BS-3. Stop socialization of losses and privatization of gains. Taleb warns: We've "managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the U.S. in the 2000s, the banks took over the government." Only a naive idealist would expect them to surrender this Black Swan: After the next crash Wall Street will dump their losses on taxpayers (again).

BS-4. Incentive bonuses are increasing America's financial risks. You wouldn't give incentives to the manager of a nuclear plant, says Taleb. Incentives risk financial safety. "Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards." Sadly, Wall Street greed demands huge bonuses. So no changes: This Black Swan also remains as a WMD.

BS-5. High-leveraged debt increases the danger of a massive meltdown. While past equity bubbles were "mild," future "debt bubbles are vicious." Add highly leveraged debt, as we're doing now with bailouts and stimulus spending, and you get "wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error." But the Gang can't see it.

BS-6. No more derivatives ... nobody understands these WMDs. Taleb warns: "Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning. ... Derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them 'hedging' products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists."

BS-7. 'Restoring confidence' is for Ponzis, politicians and economists. Rumors are part of life, "governments cannot stop the rumors." If you hear rhetoric about "restoring confidence" from politicians or economists, they're hiding something.

BS-8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. What a great metaphor: "Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab." And yet, Obama's new bank regulatory reform package gives Wall Street access to an endless supply of their favorite drugs: derivatives, debt and bonuses.

BS-9. Never count on Wall Street advice or management for retirement. Wall Street hates Taleb for saying this: Markets are not "storehouses of value," they lack "the certainties that normal citizens require." But this Black Swan is Wall Street's "cash cow." They make hundreds of billions delivering advice and skimming money under the guise of managing our assets. They'll never give up this opportunity to steal our money.

BS-10. Let entrepreneurs, not bankers, take risks and run America. Taleb the idealist: "Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials." Before Obama's reforms Taleb offered his own: We must help "what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalizing the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the 'Nobel' in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties."

Do this and "we will see an economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage - a world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news. In other words, a place more resistant to black swans."

Remember Taleb's 10 Black Swans, because any one could trigger a disaster. Yet sadly and unfortunately, we already know Wall Street refuses to rebuild its rotting hull. Wall Street hates change. And is now, like the Titanic before it, on a collision course that will sink the good ship, the USS Utopia and its cargo of 10 beautiful black swans, steaming into the great fog banks hiding a massive iceberg ... the Great Depression 2."

- Paul B. Farrell, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/public-enemies-run-not-rob-our-banks?pagenumber=1