The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has released their final report and to no one's surprise it's a mealy-mouthed white wash to reduce real accountability of many facts already known. Read it here. Basically the report rehashes a lot of information already discovered as the causes of Financial Armageddon. Case in point is Goldman Sachs obtaining $2.9 billion through the AIG bail out.

Goldman Sachs collected $2.9 billion from the American International Group as payout on a speculative trade it placed for the benefit of its own account, receiving the bulk of those funds after AIG received an enormous taxpayer rescue,

The report does drive home the overriding message Financial Armageddon didn't have to happen. It was a direct result of fictional derivatives, deregulation and a host of other financial lobbyists' wish lists which were granted absolute in the last 30 years.

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism who has been following every nitty gritty detail since day one:

Yet another hearing, yet more denials and refusal to accept any responsibility in the Financial crisis.

I'm sick to death of this frankly and say, put them in jail and be done with it. If one cannot put them in jail, pass laws to do so with ease and be done with it.

I also propose bloggers put together a financial reform bill, all publish it on their blogs, and demand Congress pass it. It seems every one monitoring these events knows exactly what to do (including break up the big banks), except our Government.

Seriously, is anyone else sick to death of Congressional continual pussy footin' around? An admonishment here, a scolding there, in some obscure hearing on capital hill? No consequences, no concrete changes in law, no real action. All hat, no cattle, pomp and circumstance.

With that, Dylan Ratigan did a segment, which sums up what's really going on with financial reform.

Cross posted from DailyKos, but expanded

The National Academy of Sciences has issued its own estimates of the number of Americans in poverty, and yes, it’s much worse than the official statistics have been telling us for the past decade. The new NAS formula estimates nearly 1 in 6 Americans, 15.8 percent, are living below the poverty line. That’s 48 million Americans.

By comparison, the latest official Census Bureau statistics are that 13.2 percent of Americans, or 39.8 million, are impoverished. It should be noted that the Census Bureau is reportedly cooperating with the National Academy of Sciences to get this information out as quickly as possible.

I put this up yesterday on DailyKos. It did not get much traction, but I think it is important to get people thinking about the issues raised. In short, the success of both the two-pronged bank bailout (TARP and the Fed’s largesse), and the stimulus bill, are going to depend on whether or not the U.S. economy is transformed. I don’t think there is much disagreement in the direction we need to shove the U.S. economy; BruceMcF has done a brilliant job of discussing some of the more important aspects of transportation.