You can’t imagine the sense of loss I had about the Lehman Brothers collapse — because I didn’t have any. This is another example of an institution taken down by its own greed. A reasonable rate of return on investments wasn’t enough for Lehman Brothers. No, they had to jump on every sub-prime mortage out there, because when things were good, they could make money both packaging them and reselling them for further resale. Everybody loved the sub-prime mortgages because of the exorbitant interest rates they earned. Why make a good mortgage at six percent when you can make a no-document one for nine percent? The commissions for everybody are higher, and if it doesn’t work out, you just foreclose on the poor idiot’s house, resell it, and make even more! Or at least that was the concept of the brilliant minds of Wall Street. Obviously, it didn’t work out.
There are many lessons to be learned here. First of all, flat out, when the hell will the American people and government learn that Wall Street and big business simply are not to be trusted? This is not to say that there aren’t millions (or at least several) honest businessmen out there. But on a large scale, money is intoxicating. For those for whom no amount of money is ever enough, which are the people attracted to Wall Street and mega-corporations, ethics and morality are nothing more than worthless impediments. Just read a little about the history of American business. Just look at the financiers who endowed many of America’s finest institutions. The Morgans and Rockefellers of this world, at least the original ones, built all those libraries, museums, and institutions of higher learning from blood money. After smashing everything and everyone in their path to accumulate immense wealth, they tried to wash their hands of the stench by doing something good with it at the end.
The same attitude lives on today to a great extent. Standing in its way are laws, regulations, labor unions (when they aren’t crooked themselves), and government oversight. Under the present Bush administration, and for years before, business had its way in dismantling the protections citizens have from the amorality of business. The problem though, is that in their purest form, markets are nothing more than the arena of the tooth and claw. Fair dealing is a weakness. The more unregulated the markets have become, the more conscience-free they have grown, to the point where even Mr. American Droid is starting to take notice. Of course, a lot of damage has been done.
Under Bush II, it became a flat-out free-for-all out there in the financial markets. Unfortunately, the much-heralded “market forces” didn’t reach an equilibrium and the ship tipped over. Now, though, the same government that thinks that ordinary citizens aren’t worthy of help is determined to make sure that no one from Fannie May, Freddie Mac, or AIG Insurance (to name but a few bailout recipients) is reduced to shining his own shoes or giving up his butler. Under Bush II, a regular person who falls down is left to lie there unless the strained resources of private charity come to his rescue. A rich person, or a shareholder in a rich person’s company, is handed a new bag of cash and given a mild chastisement. The mulligans all go to the the guys in the nice pants.
Just like it isn’t a bad thing to be a liberal, it isn’t a bad thing to have a government. As I see it, the government should represent the collective best of its citizens. I’m against the death penalty, for instance. However, if a close friend or family member were brutally murdered, I’m human enough that I’d probably want that person executed. It would be the job of the government to ignore me and do the right thing. Maybe this is a bad example, since there’s still plenty of support for the death penalty. But you know what I mean. Our collective self, our government, should have the rationality to act better than an individual inflamed by passion. Should. Our government should understand that while capitalism can be a pretty good economic engine, engines with no guidance can veer dangerously out of control.
Anyway, here’s a picture of Mary Ann with a goat.
