In case you didn't know it, the revolution has already happened, and we lost

House Speaker John Boehner said the White House "moved the goal posts" by demanding an additional $400 billion in revenue during talks over a deal to avoid default. He said he was confident the U.S. will not default but said the White House has "refused to get serious" about spending cuts.

"Dealing with the White House is like dealing with a bowl of Jell-O," Boehner said.

-- a 7:30pm ET Washington Post "Politics News Alert"

by Ken

Compared with thinking about the horror in Norway (about which there doesn't seem to be any news coming in), it's almost a relief to turn to the Theater of the Weird that is our Debt-Ceiling Crisis & Negotiations Inc.

I don't doubt that Sunny John has a point about negotiating with the Obamablob, but when did any right-wing bully ever have trouble getting him to meet them 80 or 90 percent of the way? Besides, when it comes to blobulousness, how can you not return the charge playground-style: "Takes one to know one."

I don't know how this Theater of the Weird tragicomedy is going to work out except that it's going to be really, really bad. In important ways the outcome is predetermined, except for filling in some of the blanks and some of the numbers. As a colleague has been pointing out, the war is over, and we've lost. The oligarchs are in charge, and not many decisions of federal consequence are going to be made which don't meet with their approval.

Call it a civil war, or a New American Revolution, or a putsch, it took place without most of us realizing it was happening, and the New Order was established by the time it was determined that the federal government's basic principle in addressing the economic meltdown was going to be the ensure that the financial elites were made whole.

So I had to chuckle when I saw a piece pumped out by the NYT's DealBook financial-news service, chronicling the woes of the interns to the oligarchs, which starts like so:

"Fewer Perks and More Work for Wall St.’s Summer Interns"
BY KEVIN ROOSE

Wall Street interns have gone from pampered to pummeled.

In better days, college-age interns at the nation’s largest investment banks, known as summer analysts, were treated like young royalty. But shrinking profits and a spate of recent bank layoffs have forced this year’s interns to shoulder full-time workloads.

“I worked 85 hours last week!” said one Goldman Sachs summer analyst, a college senior who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not allowed to speak to the media.

“The last two days, I’ve been here until 3 a.m.,” said a Deutsche Bank analyst, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job. “My weekends are fun, but that’s about it.”

While hard work has been customary among young finance workers for years, after-hours benefits once made the long days more palatable. . . .

And at this point we're launched on tongue-hanging-out tales of erstwhile intern splendor. The point of the piece, I'm sure, is to spread the word that the banksters are tightening their belts in these troubled times.

Unexpected turbulence in the industry has hit this year’s interns, who say that fewer full-time employees has meant more work for them. UBS and Credit Suisse have both conducted layoffs this year, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are cutting back as well.

“Managing directors are telling interns, ‘We’re going to need you to step up,’ ” said one bank recruiter, who spoke only anonymously because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

By all means read the piece. It's entertaining. But I don't believe for a moment it tells us that the banksters are wobbling. What it tells me is that, now that they're consolidating their hegemony, one of the spoils of victory is being able to remake decisions about who has to be paid what. As we've been noting, there appears to be no limit to the greed of our financial lords, and I'm assuming they're simply making new calculations about what they have to pay those summer interns.

Maybe in the past they had to share some of their loot with the fiscal farmhands. For sure now they don't have to. As so many other bulwarks of the old-fashioned middle class have discovered to their chagrin, they're part of the team, they're just hired hands and hangers-on. As regards those poor downtrodden interns, reporter Roose seems to have found no shortage of whiners, but no deniers or decliners.

[D]emand at top-flight colleges for the internships, which had tailed off slightly during the financial crisis, has come roaring back.

“It’s the best way to land a permanent position, it’s prestigious, and there’s a steep learning curve, so you come away having been quickly trained and assigned meaningful work,” said Patricia Rose, director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania.

For their long hours, Wall Street interns are rewarded handsomely. Summer analysts are generally paid based on the prorated salary of a first-year analyst. At Goldman Sachs, for example, a first-year analyst’s salary of $70,000 translates to a summer intern’s pay of about $15,000 for 10 weeks of work, which includes a $2,000 housing stipend, according to one current intern. Interns at the Manhattan offices of BlackRock, the asset management firm, are paid a prorated salary that comes out to around $33 an hour, with time and a half for overtime exceeding 40 hours a week, according to a company spokeswoman.

But for most interns, the real prize is an end-of-summer job offer. Investment banks stock their full-time ranks with former interns, and the pressure to create loyalty during a 10-week summer is palpable. . . .

or interns who survive the summer, the payoff can be big. Top performers are often given offers in the fall for full-time positions that begin the following summer, freeing them from the stress of a senior-year job search.

And even for interns who don’t plan on returning full time next summer, like the overworked Deutsche Bank summer analyst, a Wall Street internship may be good preparation for the trials of working life.

“If I can get through this, I can get through anything,” the intern said.

On the chance that those internships may prove bonanzas, the would be financial wolves and sharks seem happy to take whatever terms are offered, so the oligarchs are adjusting the terms they're offering. "More for themselves" would be the operative economic principle.

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