http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ilout-20110411



America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we're broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year's retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.



Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?



Most Americans know about that budget. What they don't know is that there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy. After the financial crash of 2008, it grew to monstrous dimensions, as the government attempted to unfreeze the credit markets by handing out trillions to banks and hedge funds. And thanks to a whole galaxy of obscure, acronym-laden bailout programs, it eventually rivaled the "official" budget in size — a huge roaring river of cash flowing out of the Federal Reserve to destinations neither chosen by the president nor reviewed by Congress, but instead handed out by fiat by unelected Fed officials using a seemingly nonsensical and apparently unknowable methodology.



This article appears in the April 28, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue will be available on newsstands and in the online archive April 15.

 

Wow, just ******* wow. The worst part about it is that several of my military friends are posting on fb abouonly getting half their paychecks and that they're being promised to be paid back later.

 

We've been had, folks! Grab the pitchforks!

 

I prefer shotgun or rifle, but whatever works lol

 

But that's so impersonal. These are the kind of people you want squirming on the end of your pitchfork!

 

What about torches? Can we use torches?

 

Team work guys team work

While the comie bastards are on the end of the pitchfork squirming hit em with a torch and watch them burn.

 

id like a torch and spear combo. and could we release lions? that sounds fun

 

For personal vendettas I prefer a good ol kabar lol nothing like a 7" blade to say I hate you

 

Im feeling the torches myself