Microsoft admits to dodging $29B in taxes. Yes, billion with a B.

[Arkaign]

The crash was extremely multifaceted, but was aggravated by the use of nebulous derivatives that weren't really tangible.

Many things harm the general economy to the benefit of an extreme few.

Oil futures are a big personal peeve of mine. The true supply/demand cost of oil is far less than what the market price usually is due to speculators driving the costs up artificially. I think futures should still be in play, but only for those actually taking physical delivery (as the futures trading was initially created for in the first place).

A great example is the oft-quoted 'Gas was $1.80 a gallon when Obama took office'. Well, yes, that's sort of true. But only because the economy was crashed to the point that the speculators fled the market temporarily, exposing the true supply/demand rate. People didn't stop driving in 2008, trucks didn't stop rolling, planes didn't stop flying, the contraction might have accounted for a 1-2% drop in true demand, but not enough to crash the price of gas from close to $4/gallon before the banking crisis to less than half of that.

And what happened when the scare was over? The speculators came back and boom, prices jacked up again.

How many Americans benefit from a handful of speculators raking them over the coals? Not very many. It would be an absolutely fantastic policy to lock out those vampires, but it will never happen. Big banking owns the Democrats and Republicans, and people who think there is any difference between the parties beyond window dressing stun me with their naivete. We lost the country ages ago thanks to selling our politicians to the highest bidders.