by Sara Luckow, TMC MediaWire Blogger

In the past few years, the economic relationship between the United States and China has changed dramatically. As Tim Fernholz writes in the American Prospect: "Chastened U.S. officials who once lectured their counterparts in [China] on financial liberalization are now humbled in front of their largest creditor, reduced to offering promises of fiscal responsibility." It's a strange state of affairs. Fernholz rightly argues that:

"The common interest of the peoples, rather than the economic elite, ought to be the driving motivation behind the two countries' interactions. There is no doubt that economic openness has brought wealth to both countries, and the Obama administration is happy to laud the Chinese for bringing millions out of poverty. But in a relationship between "capitalism with American characteristics" and "socialism with Chinese characteristics," sometimes the people--whether they be workers losing jobs in the United States or the millions of Chinese living without political freedom or prosperity--have interests other than the elites. Today, we're in an economic crisis, and pragmatism overrides all else. But as recovery continues, the U.S. will require more thought on the strategic track, and perhaps in a few years our discussions with China, as they should be with all our friends, will be more frank."

But our current economic relationship with China pre-dates President Obama's "talk first" style of diplomacy. As Robert Scheer of The Nation writes: "Don't blame any of this on peacenik liberals. The new conciliatory--nay, deferential--tone toward China precedes the Obama administration, having begun in bilateral talks during the last years of the Bush administration as the U.S. economy began its ignominious downfall. It was George W. Bush's treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, who set the course when the former Goldman Sachs chairman realized how dependent were his Wall Street buddies on Chinese goodwill."

Strange relations with China aside, things aren't going so well at home. Rick Wolff, an economist from the New School, says the stimulus package has big problems in a discussion with The Real News. Wolff also notes that we shouldn't take Wall Street chatter about an economic upswing too seriously. "I think the first thing to remember is the people who are celebrating where we are now are the same people who could not imagine, did not imagine, did not foresee the problem we had last year," Wolff says.

But what's going on with our favorite bailout recipients? Talking Points Memo takes on the case of former Federal Pension Guarantor Charles Millard, who exploited his personal ties with employees at BlackRock Capital and Goldman Sachs while choosing firms to manage the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. At this point, both firms "may have run afoul of federal contracting rules in how they courted Millard."

Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are also on the lookout for the next big economic bubble. Salon reveals that both firms are diversifying their portfolios to include agriculture, in addition to government contracts. "Food is becoming the new oil," especially since the world's population is expected to crest nine billion by 2050. And a lot of land is necessary to grow enough food for nine billion people. Phillipe Heilberg, founder of American investment firm Jarch Capital, is hedging his bets on farmland in distressed countries. "Instead of buying stocks, the former banker is now speculating on the political future of South Sudan, which he insists will be an independent country in 10 years, at which point land will be far more expensive than it is today."

It's abundantly clear that we can't rely on the economic elite to represent the people's interests. Tomorrow's economic structure must be drastically different if the United States is going to thrive. Put simply, we're going to have to seriously reevaluate our economic priorities and decide who calls the shots. Here's hoping that everyday people have a say.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy and is free to reprint. Visit StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net for complete lists of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.

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This past week, the Treasury Department's Office of Thrift Supervision Issued a Prompt Corrective Action Directive to $14 billion holding company BankUnited of Coral Gables, Florida's largest financial services firm.

From Zero Hedge:

(BankUnited) was told by its regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision, to find a buyer who would raise its depleted capital to acceptable levels or risk a government takeover. In an ominously sounding "prompt corrective action directive", the OTS has essentially given the bank a 20 day ultimatum.

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News events appear to be unfolding in a virtually symmetric fashion over the past 24 hours to indicate that the shit may, indeed, be hitting the fan with regard to congressional TARP/bailout investigations into various, potential improprieties that may have occurred, in the early Fall of 2008, between senior management at AIG and Goldman Sachs. Further exacerbating these realities, it  is a matter of highly-publicized record that all of this played out under the direct supervision of some of the highest-ranking U.S. officials within the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve.

William Black, the former deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp during the U.S. Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980's, is interviewed in this week's Barron's Magazine in what may be an even more provocative piece than his highly publicized Bill Moyers' interview last week.  As many reading this may recall, Black's PBS interview was widely covered in the blogosphere last week, including a very spirited discussion between multiple DKos' diarists.

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This post is about the many ways in which Wall Street is about to do what they've always done to us: game the system for their own advantage.

It's what they do. As the old question goes: "Why do you think they get the big bucks?"

But, first, a little background...

There are a ton of extremely valid reasons why our government is engaging in the biggest giveaway of all time to the status quo (a/k/a Wall Street).

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Glenn Greenwald has recently posted a very abstract jeremiad about our corrupt "establishment," with multiple concurring citations from Atrios,Paul Krugman,Matt Taibbi,Armando, (Big Tent Democrat on TalkLeft), and even Eliot Spitzer, recently returned from the dead by a collective realization that he was right about everything.

Our "establishment" is corrupt, and public outrage about the AIG bonuses is a very good thing, because it scares the corrupt "elite," and fear is the only force that can control those monsters.

This is only half right, as far as it goes, but it doesn't go quite far enough, and stops at a politically safe distance from the Oval Office, which is exactly where the buck is supposed to stop, and where Barack Obama continues to enable and support the most corrupt financial "establishment" since almost exactly the same corrupt "establishment" produced the Great Depression.

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