"Insiders Don't Criticize Other Insiders". Cross post from GD and thank you to Ichingcarpenter
A recent review in the New York Times of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s new memoir “A Fighting Chance” recalls a stunningly despicable quote by Summers.
In the spring of 2009, when the banker handout, I mean bailout, was a heated topic of discussion, Elizabeth Warren attended a dinner with Mr. Summers who at the time was the director of the National Economic Council and a top economic adviser to President Obama. This is what transpired:
After dinner, “Larry leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice,” Ms. Warren writes. “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider.
Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them.
Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say.
But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.
What is so incredible about the quote above is that it essentially proves correct everything I and many others have been saying about how “things work” in America these days. The statements above describe a petty, childish oligarchy of arrogant fools.
This small club of people call all the shots and do not listen to “outside” ideas whatsoever. This is why nothing changes. This is why the same people are recycled through positions of power over and over again no matter how badly they screw up and how many millions of lives they ruin.
This is why there is a two-tiered justice system in which the rich and connected never go to jail, while the average citizen can have his home raided by police for a parody Twitter account.
This is why the 0.01% have been able to loot all of the nation’s wealth while median inflation adjusted wages have been declining for 40 years.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-29/quote-day-larry-summers-elizabeth-warren-insiders-dont-criticize-other-insiders
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/business/from-outside-or-inside-the-deck-looks-stacked.html