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By Rady Ananda
COTO Report 17Mar2010

From around the web, several sources are questioning Lehman Brothers’ rampant thievery and cover-up facilitated by corporate media:

On MSNBC last Friday, Dylan Ratigan reported on Lehman Bros’ $50 billion fraud, for which president Richard Fuld paid himself half a billion dollars a year. (Maybe Fuld should fund universal healthcare.)

Columbia Journalism Review reported on Saturday that blogs are following up on this story, which corporate media is burying:

“Say, we just learned about a $50 billion fraud on Thursday. Think there might be some newsworthy follow-ups here? …. This [is] the biggest financial news story of the week—and one of the biggest of the year. These papers have hundreds of journalists at their disposal.”

CJR advises that you’ll be better informed by reading the blogs, Zero Hedge and Naked Capitalism than you have The Wall Street Journal or New York Times.”

Some clarifying info is provided at Socialist Worker where Lee Sustar writes:

“Wall Street even managed to ward off any serious regulation of credit default swaps, the complicated securities that billionaire investor Warren Buffet likened to weapons of mass destruction. It was credit default swaps–essentially, a kind of financial insurance against the threat of a company or institution defaulting on a debt–that led to the meltdown of investment bank Lehman Brothers and AIG, and nearly the entire financial system.

“A year ago, credit default swaps trading appeared to be headed for rigorous regulation. Instead, these and other forms of speculative trading are back and bigger than ever.

“The banks may suffer a slap on the wrist–or at worst, a kick in the shins. The Obama administration’s proposal for a fee on the big banks is at best a minor irritant to Wall Street.”

Do capitalists actually serve time for financial crime? Or does that only happen in fairy tales about capitalism? Justice delayed is justice denied. As with the sell-out on healthcare — Kucinich and Sanders both voting for a plan that requires poor people to buy insurance for the Western Medical System — We the People are on our own to enact reform of any kind. Sustar writes:

“Genuine reform will only come when labor and grassroots organizations turn up the heat–not only on Wall Street bankers, but also their enablers in the White House and Congress.”