November 6, 2009

• The Street of Whipping Boys

  just when i thought we were pretty settled on the number of ways and reasons how and why the public should demonize Wall St., i see the news over the last few days and find something completely new for america to get pissed at Wall St. about!  Wall St. is getting H1N1 vaccines along with everyone else!  oh noes!!!  mothers, lock up your doors and hide your children!  those fang-faced, blood-sucking boogeymen are back! 

  apparently, some big Wall St. banks got H1N1 vaccines by the NYC government, the authority charged with disseminating the vaccine there, while some hospitals and clinics still have shortages.  the news media have been unabashedly and quite shamefully painting this as another example of Wall St. greed, openly implying, but never directly saying, the banks are getting unfair preferential treatment while endangering the public. 

  so, let me get this straight.  the public is clamoring for wide and quick distribution of the vaccine to high-risk people, BUT only through the traditional methods that are almost guaranteed to be bottlenecks?  i understand that there may still be lines at hospitals for the vaccine, but given the need for fast and wide area coverage shouldn’t the city utilize a shotgun approach and send vaccines to as many existing clinics to cover a wider dispersion area?  the idea that there’s time and bureaucratic manpower available to poll hospitals, wait for a response, do the math and ultimately derive an accurate count of which hospital needs how many vaccines is completely, off-the-wall ludicrous.  given that that kind of slow, calculated approach is unacceptable right now, shouldn’t the city send smaller amounts of vaccine to many more clinics rather than sending them all to just a small handful hospitals?  and that’s pretty much exactly what they did.  the city sent the vaccines to a large list of company clinics, including Wall St. bank clinics that service huge swaths of employees daily, as well as hospitals. 

  think for a second about what the public and the media are really saying with all this coverage.  note that they don’t mention the other non-Wall St. companies that got the vaccines.  they just highlight the Wall St. banks including Goldman Sachs, their latest whipping boy.  they are saying the city should send out the vaccines to all clinics except Wall St. bank clinics.   is that what we’re all about as a society right now?  for shame!  i mean even if Wall St. were solely to blame for this economic shit storm we’re suffering — and they’re so very clearly not –, is this how a civilization treats itself? 

  and who the hell absolved the rest of the country outside Wall St. of all blame in this recession anyway?  was it not the local mortgage broker who originated the bad loans?  were there not legions of gullible and greedy buyers who signed up for mortgages that they couldn’t possibly support?  were they not the voters — half the country — who elected the administration that let the SEC relax regulations?  get off your fucking high horse, America, and accept some responsibility.  this is our problem.

  • 9:40 am
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