This program is made possible by the members and donors to the show, for details visit

the membership tab at BestOfAleft.com and welcome to the award winning BestOfA Left

Podcasts with Cups Today from the Rachel Maddo show, The Young Turks, The Majority Report,

The Tom Hartman program, Counter-Spin, The David Pakman Show, and Moyers & Company.

And the thing to remember about the idea of taxing the rich is that it's not punishing

success if the rules of the game are rigged, which they are.

In March 2007, some of the fine folks at Morgan Stanley were brainstorming via email about

what they wanted to call a new product they were working on. It was an investment package

essentially that they would eventually go on to sell to a Chinese bank. Here are some

of the potential product names that were suggested in this brainstorming session by a particular

Morgan Stanley vice president. Flutter Fish 2007 or Mike Tyson's Punch Out 2007 or

else suggested nuclear holocaust 2007. Now you don't think that will sell it? Okay, what about

subprime meltdown 2007? Or perhaps BestOfAll? The right-to-the-point suggestion of

Poop Bag 2007. Only the Morgan Stanley guy did not suggest Poop as the word before bag,

he suggested the other four letter word that means the same thing but starts with S.

The reason the Morgan Stanley folks were even jokingly suggesting giving their own products

such derogatory names is because they knew it was a Poop Bag, they knew it was worthless,

but they would then go on to start selling that thing for a price that would not indicate that

it was worthless. This kind of scam is at the center of why our financial system collapsed.

Wall Street was selling things for prices that did not reflect the value of those things at all.

But here's the thing, that was not supposed to be allowed to happen. You're not supposed to be

able to sell financial products for way, way, way, way more than they're actually worth. Somebody

...