To be robbed and betrayed by a fiendish underground conspiracy, or by the earthly agents of Satan, is at least a romantic sort of plight - it suggests at least a grand Hollywood-ready confrontation between good and evil - but to be coldly ripped off over and over again by a bunch of bloodless, second-rate schmoes, schmoes you chose, you elected, is not something anyone will take much pleasure in bragging about.

One loves one's country the way one loves a family member. And sometimes that family member does really embarrassing, shitty things. But you still love them.

It's come around to that point of view at the end of a long evolutionary process, in which the rule of law has slowly been replaced by giant idiosyncratic bureaucracies that are designed to criminalize failure, poverty, and weakness on the one hand, and to immunize strength, wealth, and success on the other.

Private equity firms aren't necessarily evil by definition. There are many stories of successful turnarounds fueled by private equity, often involving multiple floundering businesses that are rolled into a single entity, eliminating duplicative overhead.

It may be that America has become too big and complicated for most people to deal with being part of. People are longing for a smaller, stupider reality.

Over the years, many in the public have become numb to news of financial corruption, partly because too many of these stories involve banker-on-banker crime.

The party in power almost always unapologetically engages in deficit spending, while the other party argues passionately against the evils of debt and deficits.