Jim Grant writes in the WSJ - Why No Outrage? Good question.

Huey Long, who rhetorically picked up where Lease left off, once compared John D. Rockefeller to the fat guy who ruins a good barbecue by taking too much. Wall Street habitually takes too much. It would not be so bad if the inevitable bout of indigestion were its alone to bear. The trouble is that, in a world so heavily leveraged as this one, we all get a stomach ache. Not that anyone seems to be complaining this election season.

In an interesting side note, the SEC has issued an exemption to the naked shorting prohibition it recently promulgated. Who, you might ask, is exempted? Well, just the boyz whose stock everybody else is prohibited from shorting. The SEC once more fulfills its role of protecting the industry’s compensation at the expense of the investing public.

Jim Grant asks, why no outrage? Well, there is a plentiful supply right here. And elsewhere. But so long as the “two-party” oligarchy runs the country, outrage is futile. Vote Libertarian. Vote for real change, not just rearranging the office allocation on Capitol Hill amongst a mostly hereditary clique of permanent professional politicians.

Speaking of outrage, how about the spending on the President’s personal helicopter fleet, “Marine One” ? Mostly just 10-minute shuttle flights to and from Andrews AFB. The price tag, for 28 helicopters, get this - $11.2 billion. Talk about the imperial presidency, even Caligula or Commodus would blush at this kind of expenditure. That’s roughly $100 per U.S. household, to say nothing of personnel and operating costs. Just for occasional personal transportation.