Michael Moore schools Maria Bartiromo on capitalism

From Crooks and Liars:

Michael Moore had a few things to say about the Dow rallying past 10,000 today on the set of Morning Joe. First on how well the markets are doing.

Moore: Oh! It’s so incredible. Yes. Fifteen million people out of work.

Scarborough: Isn’t this a perfect example for you? Isn’t this a great example of what you’re trying to say? How there’s a disconnect between what’s going on on Wall Street, 10,000, and Main Street, 10% unemployment?

Moore: Oh, it’s not a disconnect. It’s connected very well. It’s connected just the way our economic system is set up. It’s set up so that the pyramid scheme that we call capitalism—it’s become a pyramid scheme now—the very few at the top get away like bandits making billions and billions of dollars. And everybody else in the lower parts of the pyramid are told to work really hard and maybe some day they can come up and be on top of the pyramid too. Well guess what? There’s only a few people that can sit on top of the pyramid and it’s just so revolting and so immoral when we live in a country—the wealthiest country on earth—fifteen million people unemployed. One in every eight homes right now is in foreclosure or delinquency. And they’re celebrating on Wall Street? And they’re paying each other bonuses?

Surprisingly Moore gets some agreement from Joe and Mike on the disparity of wealth in the United States. Maria Bartiromo however disagrees with Moore’s view of the news on Wall Street. Shocker right? The Wall Street flack tries to come to their defense.

Bartiromo: A couple of things I have to insert here. On the one hand I am a big fan of Michaels but I have to disagree that capitalism is a pyramid scheme. I think that, I actually think that’s absurd but on the bonuses obviously compensation did get way out of hand on Wall Street and for some individuals at the top. I agree with that.

But let’s not forget the millions and millions and millions of people who have benefited, who have pensions, who have mutual funds who are invested in this market and may not even know it who have made a lot of money over the years. So it’s not necessarily just the people at the top making money when the market goes higher. That is also absurd.

(crosstalk)

Moore: No, I’m sorry. I understand what you just said. That was the old days when Leave it to Beaver and Andy of Mayberry, that is the way it used to work. Here’s how it is now.

Bartiromo: Okay.

Moore: The wealthiest—let me finish—the wealthiest one percent right now in this country have more financial worth than the ninety five percent under them combined. One percent more than ninety five percent combined—that’s capitalism now. It’s a system of legalized greed. It’s way out of control and when you talk about people and their pension funds—people watching us right now—nobody even knows if they’re going to have a pension or what’s going to happen to it. Everybody is full of anxiety. People don’t know if they’re going to have a job next year. That’s just not how you run a country. This isn’t how you create the next great thing and put people to work when you’ve got everybody going around so full of fear and just not knowing what’s going to happen and not knowing if they can pay the mortgage next month. There’s a foreclosure filing once every seven and a half seconds right now.

(crosstalk)

Bartiromo: I mean there was a structure in place and there has been a structure in place in terms of regulating the banks—in terms of overseeing the risks that they take on.

Moore: There’s no structure!

Bartiromo: So you can’t just say that you know, oh these guys were just given the go ahead to do whatever they wanted…

Moore: There’s no structure!

Bartiromo: Who was watching the store in terms of the regulatory environment overseeing the services companies?

Scarborough: Isn’t that the problem though?

Scarborough goes on to cite how lack of regulation of Wall Street has led to this mess and Moore agrees with him and reminds everyone this has been a bipartisan failing going back to the days of Ronald Reagan. Moore notes that the seven largest banks that took our TARP money have seventy five percent of all the banking assets in the United States and suggests people move their money out of the big banks and into community banks and credit unions.

I think Maria Bartiromo has been spending way too much time snuggling up to those CEO’s over at CNBC and a little reality check for her by Moore on what life is like for most Americans was a welcome break from the usual hackery on Morning Joe.