Roman Senators: 400 AD, 2010-2011 AD

They're much the same. Roman Senators in fifth century Rome were the wealthy elite; they had formal titles; our elite does not. There are no legal disabilities and privileges dividing society, as there were in the fifth century, but it hardly matters.

In both eras, the dominant "Senators" constructed schemes to loot the wealth everyone else produced. Maybe it was a natural outgrowth of the Roman Empire's conquest-slave society. But it's happened here especially with the explosion of the financial sector--supported by empire, the US and wealthy nation's national banks.

Alan Greenspan helped create the casino financial system, opening the door to Wall Street's "inventions," like Credit Default Swaps, and even, variable interest mortgages, encouraging homeowners to cash in, to gamble, or buy ATV's.

In Roman times, Senators arranged it so they could collect everyone else's taxes, while avoiding taxes themselves. They used their positions and connections in the Imperial bureaucracy to collect all the gold, land and slaves in the empire, impoverishing everyone else. In the US, today, Warren Buffet and his hedge fund colleagues pay taxes, but despite the many millions they earn, they pay at about half the rate of ordinary Americans. Obama and Congress just extended low income tax rates for the wealthy, who already pay lower rates on capital gains, interest, and payroll taxes. They’ve cornered most of the new wealth created since 1975.

In the US, the Fed creates money for the elite: it's been expanding the money supply for decades. Why for the elite? Low interest rates--virtually zero for the banks--allow them to make cost-free profits on the rest of us. Have you ever borrowed money at zero interest? Further, cheap money induces fools (like me) into the stock market, but the sophisticated traders, the ones with "algorithms" and computer programs--and lots of virtually free capital--are the ones who walk away with profits. The rest of us buy high, sell low, and enrich our brokers with fees.

Of course, Wall Street isn't the only reason why US wealth concentrated at a staggering rate since the 1970's. There was the Reagan "revolution," the proliferation of conservative "think tanks" (propaganda sites now fueling Fox News) the Clinton collaboration, W's triumph, and now Obama's compromise/capitulation. With the important exception of Clinton's tax hike on the wealthy, all the rules, all the financial innovations, all the dilution of regulations, were directed toward the enrichment of a tiny elite.

And it has prospered. Wall Street, after the massive government bailouts of 2007-8, has sucked in greater profits, largely from gambling with government money, than it ever did before: in the midst of the Great Recession, with 9.6-18% unemployment, job insecurity, and banks gambling, instead of lending.

We're not out of recession, but we're on our way to another bubble crash. The elite, like 5th century Roman Senators, could capture all the wealth.