I was driving home this evening listening to the discussion about why the financial institutions are putting out the same hybrid products that brought us this wonderful recession, hearing the pundits explain that it brings capital into the markets and although its a bit (a bit?) risky, these instruments help to drive the market. Ok. I’m no financial whiz but didn’t we just loan billions and trillions of dollars to these self serving financial institutions to NOT have them bet the store? Wasn’t part of the project to make them more fiscally responsible? Somehow we the poor schmoes who pay taxes are subsidizing a very wealthy gambling habit. We’re bound to lose. We may be the house but in this case we hold none of the trump cards.
Trump cards? Isn’t this banking? Isn’t this where the banker sits across the table and says “Well Joe, opening a restaurant is a risky business and we’ll need some collateral” — or so it was in the past. Now we have bankers betting (your house) on 10:1 or 100:1 odds knowing that the worst will be that the government will for a time be paying into their bank. Where are their ethics.
Ahh ethics. It seems that capitalism trumps ethics. Do undo others before they do unto you. The Ivory Tower at Havard spoke several weeks ago about plans to include teaching ethics to the business school. Its the piper teaching the cobra. Once the cobra leaves the nest, well then its just a bunch of snakes isn’t it?
It wasn’t until the sentencing the other week that I got it. Bernie Madoff…. made off with our monies. Too sweet. such onomatopoeia. No one saw the deal too good to be true, 30:1 winnings? Get real folks. Its all about the casino, and we the taxpayer have been at the largest gaming table ever, Bernie and his friends (and there are more no doubt) are pikers compared to the banks and so called financial houses that take our monies and throw it on the international craps table. Oh lost a few billion in that scheme. Not to worry Uncle will back you. . . .and he has.
