With all of the news today about the latest Bankster Bailout (aka 50 State Settlement – just read David Dayen’s articles from today at FDL News as well as this and this from Cynthia Kouril and this from Scarecrow), I don’t need to say too much more on the topic.

But what the hell, I might as well offer up a few examples of the Banksters and 1%ers working the refs (the TradMed and low info voters), even as they get their own way.

How do you get puff pieces on the cover of Time Magazine? Inquiring minds want to know.

The NYT discovers what FDL readers have known for quite some time: the SEC is a doormat outside the banks and financial institutions of Wall Street.

But it’s not just people outside the SEC who see this. The Partnership for Public Service took data from annual OPM employee surveys of government workers and discovered that in 2011, the SEC ranked at or near the bottom in the “large agency” category, dragged down by abysmal ratings for the employees’ views of the effectiveness of the leaders and the leaders’ strategic management.

Whether seen from the inside or the outside, the conclusion is the same: the SEC is failing at its mission. For the banks, this is a feature, not a bug.

SIGTARP isn’t happy about the failure of the Treasury to enforce its regulations on home mortgage servicers. Treasury has no response, and just whines. Anonymously.

With all the hoopla surrounding Tuesday’s State of the Union speech and the on-going Republican Clown Car primaries and caucuses, you may have missed that the annual World Economic Forum meeting is going on right now in Davos, Switzerland.

Today’s banksters are direct spiritual descendants of the mentality that gave us the Great Depression.

Dylan Ratigan is well positioned to author a book, designed to be an enjoyable and informative read by normal humans, on the ongoing financial crisis. He is the wunderkind who became Global Managing Editor for Corporate Finance of Bloomberg, the premier news service that specializes in finance, at an exceptionally young age. He was at CNBC while that network was hyping the housing bubble as a non-bubble offering fantastic investment opportunities.

So there I was this morning, having completed my daily check for jobs in my chosen field of Software Quality Assurance and Testing (I do wish it would take longer than five minutes as that would mean there are actually some improvements in the economy but such is life), when I reached the NY Times and saw this article with the headline from Mayor Bloomberg that “‘Tent City’ Goes Beyond Free Speech”:

Having the President of the United States in their corner, publicly and resolutely stating that the “stuff” banks did “wasn’t necessarily illegal,” may not give a great deal of aid and comfort to middle-class Americans who saw their real estate wealth evaporate. It may not comfort folks illegally evicted from their homes, or those illegally foreclosed upon.

Obama’s words must comfort the comfortable most of all.

You might have noticed this past week that the Department of Justice has seemingly declared war on Medical Marijuana dispensaries. The first salvo was probably at the end of September when the ATF issued a statement that it is illegal for medical marijuana users to use firearms. Since then, the four California US Attorneys have declared that California Medical Marijuana dispensaries have to close within 45 days: