Many hold that a laissez-faire, free-market economy is by far the best if driven by the self-imposed principal of Enlightened Self-Interest. Obviously, “enlightened” is a hard word to define, especially when faced with competition from the “unenlightened” that might sink your business and ruin everything you’ve built if you’re not similarly cut-throat and compromising. But is it too much to ask of the Masters Of The Universe to stop and ponder the real cost of their actions? Anyway, I’m not one to get into politics or economic theory on my blog (above my pay grade, as it were) but I’d like to break stride and re-post an entry by my dear friend Kingtycoon Mathoslah:
Senator:
I would like to take a moment to register my request that you do not allow the president and the treasury secretary’s plans to come to fruition. Please take a moment to understand why I might adopt a position seemingly in variance with the public good.
Look: Presently the lingo and the catch phrase seems to be wall street versus main street. Perhaps as an educated person, a Senator no less, you can see the foolishness of the dichotomy. Really what is at variance is this – those of us who are the victims of financial malfeasance & who will pay for it – and the perpetrators. For decades there has been no main street- so far as I can see the entire country has been placed at the mercy of the global free-marketers – People without any scruple or an ounce of goodwill for their countrymen. I live in Cuyahoga County where the damage done by those who thought it better to gamble on China or India rather than reinforce the position of the American People is readily observable. We have been taken advantage of by manufacturers led by financiers who have seen the growth of stock value as a greater good than the good of their own country and people. We have seen that Wall Street will tolerate any amount of carnage in the insignificant provinces – that is, any place that is not New York City or Washington DC. We have endured a longstanding attack on our society by the few and unspeakably wealthy. Now they require not just that our region’s economy collapse, not just that we serve at their pleasure in the workplace – but that we support them totally when their reckless mistakes have unpleasant repercussions for them.
Go to the Slavic Village and see what bankers have decided to make of the state of Ohio – go and see how they have taken cruel advantage of desperate people. Go and see what the president is now asking for the taxpayers to subsidize…
The financial services sector has never been anything but a house of cards- a precarious arrangement of gambling balanced by greed – it’s at the very least distasteful to decent people – but currently it’s been made the heart of our entire republic. Currently we are at the mercy of markets that have worked against every part of the American polity in favor of expanding the wealth of the few.
Please don’t make me pay for the destruction of my region, my city and my country’s principles.
Thank you.
It’s apparent you are an educated constituent-just not in economics. Wall street is viewed as responsible because investors were sold packages of mortgages which included predatory loans made under the Community Reinvestment Act of 1995. These mortgages (which tainted those packaged with them) resulted in foreclosures which hurt both those who the act was intended to help (but may have gotten GREEDY and bitten off more debt than they could service) and the investors who bought them. This was complicated by a mark-to-market accounting rule which requires holders to write-down their investment to a market value depressed by foreclosures. Now we, the DECENT PEOPLE, have the responsibility (and the opportunity to stabilize now and subsequently recover the investment) to preserve (1st) the economy and the ALSO THE PRINCIPLES of our region, our city and our country.
Thanks Sharon — I’m not so sure I count as educated on such matters, but I try to keep up a bit on it all. There’s a strange & foggy gulf between the people you meet and the people that run amok in Washington, Wall St., Hollywood, etc., but the two worlds have a real, symbiotic relationship and are thus ensnared with mutual responsibilities to understand and healthfully influence the other.
Anyway, when I got my first mortgage 4 years ago, I was a total financial schmuck. They threw money at me anyway. This year it was a convoluted muck of stress-laden paperwork to get my second. And this after acting like a highly responsible person for the last four years. (At least on paper, that is.) So it goes.
I just found this place by googling myself! Fix your RSS feed son!
Nice to read what you’ve gotta say sir.
Hey Jere — Thanks for stopping by. I’m getting back to the blog after coming to grips with the forced resettlement here on the prairie.
RSS a no go? I did not know! I shall correct.
Godspeed,
g.