Where are the Prisoners?

...for his part, he never missed a hanging - two eminent bankers guilty of forgery were to be strung up today among the ordinary people - the Stock Exchange would spare neither father nor mother, wife nor child when it came to that sort of thing...

-The Reverse of the Medal

Why don't we turn the clock to zero honey?

I'll sell the stock and spend the money.

- Brand New Day

Late in the third week of August 1914, fifteen German corps stormed across the French frontier, headed for the river crossings between Belgium and Paris. Bypassing the fortifications along the Franco-German border, the Germans expected to pin the French field armies in front of their capital where they would envelope and destroy them, compelling France's capitulation.

Time was of the essence. To escape simultaneous engagement with its two dread enemies, the Third Republic and the Russian Empire, German planning required the rapid overthrow of French striking power. An avalanche of communique from Moltke, chief of the German general staff, scourged his field commanders forward.

Initial reports seemed encouraging. The German infantry proceeded from objective to objective as if without opposition, shooting through the Flanders countryside like shit through a goose. The signals from regimental HQ's were ripe with the fruit of their advance; bridges seized, crossroads and rail junctions seized, hilltops seized, hundreds of square kilometers of France seized.

What gave Moltke the agita was the lack of evidence from the field that his columns were having any destructive effect on French military strength. He searched the reports for data indicating the enemy was falling back on Paris in disorder and disorganization. He expected to see figures for artillery pieces captured, vehicles and livestock captured, food fuel and fodder captured, ammunition and warlike supplies captured. Most importantly, he expected to see figures for prisoners captured.

An enemy retreating in confusion over crowded roads and a paniced countryside will shed prisoners by the carload. This enemy appeared to be withdrawing in good order. Worse, absence of prisoners indicates lack of contact with the fighting units of the enemy. And that means, you don't know where they are, always an ominous development.

Moltke sent out a stream of signals demanding detailed reports on captured enemy stores and prisoners. Failing to receive satisfactory replies, the signals were reduced to a peremptory query repeated hourly; Where are the prisoners?

On the fifth of September, undetected reserves of the French Sixth Army slammed into the flank of the advancing Germans to open a series of surprise attacks that threatened the First and Second German Armies with envelopment and annihilation. German forces only escaped by withdrawing sixty kilmometers back towards their starting positions and digging in on the ground that would be fought over until November 1918.

On the ninth of September 1914, Moltke reported to the Kaiser that Germany had lost the war.

Recently, we have been fed a lot of happy horseshit about reaching the end of the recession. The chairman of the Federal Reserve reports we have hit bottom. The stock market is up. Finance sector profits are up. Bank income is up. Credit card fees are up. Bonuses in the financial sector are up. TARP seems to be paying off. Mission Accomplished!

Employment has collapsed but this, we are told, is a lagging indicator and not significant as a predictor of recovery. Unless, of course, its your ass that's lagging.

But put that aside, for a moment.

We are a year out from the bailout of the investor class by the working class. We are a year out from the biggest, most daring daylight bank robbery in the history of the Republic. My question is this; Where are the prisoners?

Remember a year ago, when capitalism was in full panicy retreat? Remember how we were told we had to give up our savings and our pensions and our 401K's and our wages and our jobs and our homes and our health insurance and our kids' college funds and we had to pledge our taxes to redeem all the bullshit schemes of the buccaneer bankers and brokers and hedge fund fools.

Remember how we were told how if we didn't pay this ransom, things would get really, really bad and our whole vast and elegant free market economy would be lost to some unspecified enemy?

So we paid up.

I kind of expected there would be investigations, though. You know, since we own their asses, I thought we might have a look the books of the enterprises we paid for and see just what they'd been up to. Find out just what the fuck went wrong. And who was responsible.

And I expected there would be arrests. Mass arrests. And confiscations of property and bank accounts. Not just ours. Theirs, too.

And clawbacks of bonuses and inflated salaries. And seizures of yachts and Bentleys and beach houses and Falcon jets. I expected they would be put up for sale at public auction. You know, like they do to our houses when we have a problem with our payments.

I expected a nice surtax slapped on upper incomes. I expected a tax on stock sales to pay back the working class for bailing them out.

I expected to see all the evidence for the rout of the capitalist order we were told was in progress.

By now, I expected to see a steady stream of bankers in handcuffs, pulling their burberrys across their face as they were marched up and down the steps of the US Attorney's Office for Southern New York.

Prisoners. Thats what I expected to see. Where are the prisoners?