Thus, Halliburton has done very well at the middle class' expense.

Oh wait, there is another nexus found in the relationship between corporate welfare and the draining of resources for our society as a result. We increase spending...but decrease revenue sources.

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backwards to assess only small civil penalties (typically less than the profits of the activity, such as money laundering for drug cartels, that would land anyone else in prison, or the fraudulent investment banking during the dot com era, or the CDOs, etc.). In other words, the selling of federal debt hugely benefits the financial sector, both in cash and in lack of oversight. (Guess who were the biggest donors to Hillary? Let's see, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi. And that's just official donations. Forget about the $400k "speaking fees". Wink, wink.) Financial sector profits skyrocketed during the great heist period leading up to 2007. They escalated to around 40% of all S&P profits. This was a direct consequence of Fed policy (which appears to be increase debt until the absolute maximum). Both Greenspan (Mr. Free Market, lol) and Bernanke were huge advocates of flooding the capital markets with liquidity back in 2001. (In other words, don't let the free market work. Flood it with debt constantly.) IT WASN'T NEEDED. The stock market crash only affected people who owned stocks, i.e. the wealthier classes. So any bailout went first and foremost to them. (Just like in 2008.) The economy was only very lightly affected overall by the tech bust, which succeeded the tech boom, which itself was a direct consequence following the 1998 bailout of Long-Term Capital ("mis") Management.

In other words, every time the economy turns downward, the Fed steps in and tries to thwart the business cycle--by greatly encouraging further debt leveraging, both of private debt and of public debt. All Keynesian Fed members think this (absolutely non free market based) trick will work indefinitely, but there's a limit to the debt any person, company, or country can take on before the amount of debt works against economic growth. The only thing that central banks really know how to do is increase debt levels. Because it literally does not factor into their equations, they think it doesn't matter. (Forget about the fact that most of them, as well as those at the SEC, eventually leave and take cushy, ridiculous salaries in...the financial sector.)