And Speaking of the American Power-Money Narrative. . . . .

The 2007 financial collapse has produced a tremendous opportunity to add new chapters to the American narrative of power-money.  Much of that narrative speaks to corruption.  Americans tend to like their corruption sexually explicit.   See Larry Catá Backer, Sex, Money and Family: On the Cultural Battle Lines of Corruption in the United States and China, Law at the End of the Day, April 24, 2010.  But the sort of sexual corruption that tends to taint the ability of governmental actors to do their duty corrupts the objects of its gatekeeping.  This appears to be the case especially for the SEC in the context of the financial collapse.  

 

But Americans also seem to like their narratives of foundational sexual perversions  (that is, of sexual corruption as an intensifier and source of moral, political and economic corruption) tarted up with an oppression that is class based.  The perversity fo the rich is an important element of the justificatory narrative of state management of popular excesses.  Mae Kuykendall has suggested another set of American narrative tropes in connection with the related story of the corruption of Goldman Sachs,  an object of SEC scrutiny, and its complicity in bringing about the 2007 Financial Collapse.  See, Mae Kuykendall, Goldman Sachs and the Grassy Knoll, Conglomerate, April 19, 2010.