1. Matt Taibbi: Everything You Need to Know about Wall Street in One Brief Tale

2. Republicans Reveal a New Internal Conflict

1. Matt Taibbi: Everything You Need to Know about Wall Street in One Brief Tale

Today’s paragraph two is about the conflict between Main Street and Wall Street. Serendipity struck as I finished it when I found this Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi. Matt’s article is a perfect complement to paragraph two today. I recommend the commentary, too.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-wall-street-in-one-brief-tale-20120113

2. Republicans Reveal a New Internal Conflict

When the history of the 2012 Presidential Election is written, two potential themes are already presenting themselves for inclusion. One is the impact of Super-PAC advertisements on voters. The second is how damaging the revelations of the discord within the Republican Party were to voters in the general election. While that history is now being developed, there is a new development in the discordant themes.

The new development is the challenge by Republicans Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry of the business record of Mitt Romney.  The pair says Romney indulged not in “Venture Capitalism”, but rather in “Vulture Capitalism”.* Further they say Romney’s record is not one of job creation, but of job destruction.

Amazingly, this means there is now a debate about what kind of capitalism the Republican Party supports. Romney’s response is the criticism of his record is the “politics of envy”.  Is that the case? Do we have the politics of envy or the politics of voters realizing they have allowed Main Street to be screwed by Wall Street?

So, for the first time we have on display an internal conflict among Republicans—one between Main Street Business Republicans and Wall Street Business Republicans. The conflict is illustrated by a favorite Zig Ziglar saying, “You can have anything you want from life if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Those who acquire wealth with Zig’s approach are the ones people admire. They are the ones from Main Street who generate the goods and services making lives better and easier. For the first time, American voters may become truly aware of the difference between the Wall Street ways of making money contrasted with the Main Street ways.