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:

The big question for banks like Peter Orszag’s Citigroup then becomes “what do we do with all that property?” For them, these are “non-performing assets” that have value but produce no revenue and in fact will even cost them money to maintain like mowing the lawn, paying the taxes, etc. Repairs and such make them even more expensive to hold.

The Sunday edition of a dead tree newspaper is the most important edition of the week. Some people only read the Sunday paper, drawn in by the magazine section and the comics. When the editor decides to make a particular story front page of the Sunday edition, that editor is looking for maximum eyeballs on the story.

Yesterday’s New York Post, the flagship of Rupert Murdoch’s American fleet of media outlets, had a full page, front page, article with huge photo, of a heretofore unfamous Assistant Attorney General working for New York State Attorney General Eric Schniederman.

Painting as crime? Seems freedom of expression in art is subject to police investigation if it makes “someone” uncomfortable.

Because of that failure to finger, and a striking lack of proactive ideas in general, Obama’s Monday White House matinee served up a nothing-burger deluxe—not at all rare these days, I’m afraid, and also not well done. He wasn’t selling the steak, he wasn’t selling the sizzle, and he wasn’t telling a very good story in structural terms, either.

But the president very much needs to tell a story—to construct a narrative—because he very much needs to sell something: himself.

The Bush administration told taxpayers to hand over hundreds of billions of their hard-earned dollars to bail out Wall Street banks because the financial institutions were too big to fail. Now, Rupert Murdoch, owner of politically powerful publications and broadcast stations, claims his News Corp. is too big to know.