Nah. You give them way too much credit. Both in terms of the amount of long-term planning they have proven capable of, and the amount of secrecy that would be required. These clowns aren't precisely subtle or careful. Matt Taibbi and other muckrackers regularly interview insiders who have ratted out crooked banksters (to no visible effect, except to bring their careers to a screeching halt). If these attitudes were prevalent on Wall Street, then we'd know about it by now. I think it's much simpler: They're crooks, Ayn Rand fans, psychopaths (but I repeat myself) and, above all, short-term shysters. They only appear smart, subtle and sophisticated because they've bought the cops who were supposed to put them in the slammer when they blow stuff up for fun and profit (and all the newsies who were supposed to film the perp-walk).

The one place where I do think there's some amount of planning going on is in the military-industrial complex. Unlike the banksters, they're not in the business of defrauding widows and orphans. These people are used to planning ahead, they're used to dealing with supply chains, logistics and all the other aspects of actually making real stuff. And they have considerable experience with waging resource wars, so natural resources are on their mental map.

The banksters have none of those qualifications. They're just children on a coke binge.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.