About Fox in the Henhouse
Credits
Tom Penhale - Vocals, Electric wind instrument (EWI)
Rob Morrison - Hammond organ
Carl Puglisi - Drums
Chris Welles - Background vocals
Diane Willmont - Background vocals
Mixing and mastering by Chillhouse Recording Studio
Cover art by Tom Penhale
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I have found that when I try to make sense of the financial meltdown, the deeper I dig the more shocked and appalled I become at the greed of those working on Wall Street. While millions of us struggle to hang on to what we've got, they arrogantly manipulate the system to leave us in a more dangerous situation than ever.
I've come to see how intertwined Wall Street is with those holding political offices in this country. If you ever want to see who your representatives are being funded by, go to a website such as OpenSecrets.org or FollowTheMoney.org. With the Supreme Court's landmark decision that allows corporations to freely pour money into political campaigns, we need to be more vigilant than ever.
When the TARP bailout came up for a vote in October 2008 I was against it on principle, but admittedly did have a seed of doubt that maybe we did need an injection of cash into the system. Now we hear in the news that most of this bailout has been paid off, so it's easy to conclude that it was necessary. But there is more to this than meets the eye as shown on Nomi Prins' website.
Some say that we should have injected more. They could be right -- we'll never know. But what I do know is that the financial meltdown of 2008 could have been avoided. Unless we take the necessary measures to curb Wall Street's control over our government it will very likely happen again quite soon. If you want to see an excellent documentary on this, go see Inside Job. There are some interesting insights there as to the kind of training being given to those moving up the ranks.
And I can tell you this with certainty -- if you lost your job to no fault of your own and were losing your home as your family was being torn apart under the strain, you'd be plenty angry if you saw what Wall Street was (and is) up to. Hopefully you wouldn't let it eat you up inside -- you'd try to turn that anger into something positive, to empower yourself and connect with other like-minded people.
"Fox in the Henhouse" was written prior to Occupy. It was heartening to see people stand up to the 1%. Unfortunately, far too little progress has been made. But the spirit is still alive --