Wall Street Wilding

Illustration by Ian Michael Rousey & Chris Nosenzo

Read it and Seethe

What will it take for Americans to finally get the message that much of Wall Street, in its current form, is a corrupt enterprise in need of a top-to-bottom overhaul, a task that the year-old Dodd-Frank law, for all its verbosity, barely attempts? (Cohan - Ending the Moral Rot on Wall Street)

There have been numerous lawsuits and investigations following the Panic of '08... 

Each examination revealed layer upon layer of behavior that should make us seethe with anger. These include the decision to manufacture and sell mortgage-backed securities that were stuffed with loans of questionable value, plus the worthless AAA ratings placed on them by ratings services paid by Wall Street to do so.  (Cohan - Ending the Moral Rot on Wall Street)

He goes on to list the multi-million dollar fines happily paid by these immoral disciples of Moloch.  Get it? A $500 million fine is chump change, merely a cost of doing business.  The Titans of Wall Street destroyed the world economy with their toxic debt bombs, governments brought low, people left destitute, yet the instigators of this financial destruction are happily earning record profits and getting reelected instead of rotting in jail or hanging from a lamppost.

Three Crises:  Financial, Political, Legitimacy of the Elites

Stratfor founder George Friedman has written an excellent analysis entitled, Global Economic Downturn: A Crisis of Political Economy.  In it he explains how the financial elites' unabashed immorality and naked greed caused the financial crisis, which in turn sparked a political crisis that is now becoming a legitimacy crisis.  The aura of invincibility and omniscience has evaporated; the masses realize that the venal elites don't know what the hell they are doing.

A sense emerged that the financial elite was either stupid or dishonest or both. (Stratfor)

In this excellent article he lays out how this international crisis started (the US carpet bombed the world with toxic debt), how it hastened the decline of the already teetering welfare states, and where he sees it all going.

It is vital to understand that this is not an ideological challenge. Left-wingers opposing globalization and right-wingers opposing immigration are engaged in the same process — challenging the legitimacy of the elites.

This, then, is the third crisis that can emerge: that the elites become delegitimized and all that there is to replace them is a deeply divided and hostile force, united in hostility to the elites but without any coherent ideology of its own. In the United States this would lead to paralysis. In Europe it would lead to a devolution to the nation-state. In China it would lead to regional fragmentation and conflict. (Stratfor)

He concludes, Like Victor Davis Hanson, that this is a crisis of legitimacy. The elites have blown it; we don’t trust them anymore.

When There is no Downside...

In the past, all of this would culminate in the masses hanging the bankers and the elites from lampposts and looting and burning their property.

Civilized society instituted the state, creating a nation of laws not of men. The state would hold everyone to the rule of law and punish the guilty in order to short circuit such violence. Well, the state has failed, the masses are in angry misery and the elites who robbed us and crashed the world economy pay no price whatsoever.

This leads me to rethink the limited liability concept of financial institutions.  It is obvious that the financial titans have no fear of consequences, since it is we the people who suffer their burdens, and that is the root of the problem.