Who asked yesterday: “Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate  the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money?” Some OWS hack? Paul Krugman? No, Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich. Mitt Romney made a general election losing remark as well: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” Imagine the 30 second commercials…

So Occupy can set aside lingering anxieties about the 2012 elections. The discussion has been set in our terms and if Obama can’t beat a loser like Romney with all his corporate cash, he doesn’t deserve my help doing so.

Why are we winning? Because, not to sound too old-school, the crisis in globalized finance capital continues apace. Consider that just in today’s news:

• Shares in the Italian bank Unicredit dropped 37% in a week because it holds $52 billion of Italian sovereign debt.
• Commenting on the Unicredit situation, Carl B. Weinberg, economist at High Frequency Economics predicted: “If banks cut lending to achieve capital adequacy, we should expect a really, really big credit crunch and a really deep economic downturn to ensue.” Banks stashed 482 billion euros at the European Central Bank overnight, sign of exactly such a cut.
• Investors accepted a negative interest rate of -0.0122% to lend 3.9 billion euros to Germany, clearly for fear that investing anywhere else would be worse.
• Germany and France want Greek bondholders to accept a 50% downgrade, which is what should be called a default of a sovereign nation.
• The bankrupt US trading firm MK Global used $200 million of customer’s money to pay off their overdraft at JP Morgan Chase.
• In 2011, the average salary for Goldman Sachs partners was $3 million.
• Goldman shares fell 45% in the past year while the percentage of its revenue used as compensation rose from 39.3 to 44%. They pay themselves more when they do worse.
• Bank analyst at the brokerage firm CLSA Mike Mayo commented: ” Wall Street has its own 99 percent and 1 percent. The 1 percent continues to win against the 99 percent.” Wall St uses the language of OWS now.
• The head of the Swiss central bank resigned over corruption allegations.

Tomorrow, while the US press bloviate over Mitt Romney’s margin of victory in New Hampshire, and which of the losers gets to come second and therefore be the frontrunner in 2016, the backpages will be seeded with talk of a second “bailout” for Ireland, of the seven percent interest Italy has to pay on its debt with 300 billion needing refinance very soon, the 17% drop in bank deposits in Greece over the past year and so on.The whole fantastical enterprise of globalized capital is out of control.