Re-posting from 2007, I’m not yammering about greed and nonsense politics. I’m saying you and I did not crush our economy.
None of us laboring day to day in America did the horrid ruin we are. Unwatched crude and stupid folks we failed to teach, know little about, cannot find, let be rich; they screwed us, and repeatedly.
I’m reminding you not to blame poor folk nor the working all of us. Late payments are not housing’s slump. Rising wheat is not the price of bread.
The recent hurricane in the financial markets is blamed on mortgage loans to people unable to make their payments but is not blamed on people hiding these loans in Blue Ribbon packages while selling them offshore as top rated bonds.
I think the media failed miserably during the recent drop in global stock markets. Fear topped the headlines, editorials sent blame to all the wrong places, pundits invented diatribe that seldom identified the errors or the players.
Still details are lacking; we do not know the names or the divisions where our money has shrunk, but there are investigations underway in the offbalance sector of banks and financiers.
Banks and financial firms have two faces, core activity where activity is regulated and offsheet activity where activity is market driven – so-called free enterprise. Risk tolerance has been evolving in this area for several decades with most central regulators gradually inserting warning flags and balance sheet risk indicators rather than outright rules or constraints.
These gilt careers are seldom discussed in public. Ingenious packaging can make a quick fortune. Inventing financial products, not for the shopping center or the corner store but for the institutional trader, is one of the most promising careers on earth, until Ponzi shames us once again!
Foolish administration. Markets without regulation is license not nature.
If we’re stuck with bicycle transit, the fumes in our empty tank ought to flame our anger. If the French march for their holidays, let’s march for justice.