Start With A Show Trial...

So the Democrat's latest attack on capitalism comes in the guise of a "financial reform bill", one which will added layers of bureaucratic oversight and limit risky investments. Just what the economy needs to bust out of a recession, huh?

Well, the Republicans are lukewarm at best and the American people are somewhere between indifferent and cautious, remembering how "credit card reform", enacted to "protect" them from unscrupulous lenders, is now limiting their credit options while raising its costs.

So how do the Democrats rally some support? By using some old-school socialist tactics, and dragging one of those big, bad companies into the dock for a good, old-fashioned show trial! Look at the evil, dastardly villains at Goldman-Sachs! They're the cause of all of your problems, and we can solve it by incarcerating these mustache-twirling barons while taking over control of the banking industry ourselves! Look, if you can trust Nancy Pelosi with your health insurance, why, you can certainly trust Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank with your bank account...right?

Wall Street is wise to the game:

Wall Street is more than a little suspicious of today’s charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has accused Goldman Sachs of lying to investors about who was really behind junk mortgages securities it sold to clients.

Barclays banking analyst Roger Freeman comes right out and blasts the SEC effort as “a well-timed, and perhaps not coincidental, effort to sway some on-the-fence Republicans” to get tough on financial reform.

“Targeting GS, given the flurry of anti-Wall Street press that has centered around that firm, offers the publicity that the administration needs at this critical juncture,” Freeman says in a note to clients today.

Well, as Alinsky said, "Pick the target, freeze it, polarize it". Goldman-Sachs becomes the stand-in for all of nation's economic worries, as well as the fall guys for all of Congress' economic misdeeds. Remember how Obama used Anthem Insurance's rate hikes in California as a sledgehammer against opponents of health care reform? Well, he needs another corporate evildoer to help him take control of the banking industry, and Goldman-Sachs will fit the bill just fine. His bitches have already lead the charge:

Reid (D-Nev.) said reform would "establish clear rules of the road . . . while protecting consumers, investors and financial institutions."

"Republicans should stop obstructing our efforts to hold Wall Street accountable so that Main Street can once again prosper," he added.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the sponsor of the legislation, said: "We don't need to know the outcome of this case to know that the opaque nature of unregulated asset-backed securities fueled the financial crisis.

"Let's work on this together, let's debate the bill, and pass strong Wall Street reform to protect our country from the kinds of abuses that lost so many their jobs, their homes, and their life savings," said Dodd.

Change "Wall Street" to "insurance companies", and the Democrat's rhetoric sounds awfully familiar...

Isn't it grand that the SEC - an "independent" oversight board whose members are appointed by the president -decides to bring action against the most high-profile Wall Street firm at exactly the same time that the president needs a high-profile target to advance his political agenda?

"It will move the bill."

Change, my friends, change...