How could this have happened and why! Those are two questions I’ve been asking myself a lot lately regarding the economic disaster this country finds itself drowning in. And not just this country -- it has had major repercussions all over the world. I’m not the most savvy person where big money is concerned; I’m not sure exactly how it all functions even when things are going well – it’s pretty much a foreign language to me. But I do try to grasp the basics and lately even that is all but impossible because it’s hard to believe so many “intelligent, knowledgeable” people could have so totally screwed up! And from what I’ve read over the past several months, I’m not the only one that is totally disgusted.
Thomas Friedman, Op-Ed columnist with the NYT apparently feels exactly the same way and has a great piece today on the latest meltdown, Citigroup. I would urge you to read the entire piece, but I will quote a few of the things he had to say. The NYT piece that he quotes is one from the front page of the Sunday NYT by Eric Dash and Julie Creswell about Citigroup, entitled “Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk”
“That article exposes in searing detail – using Citigroup as Exhibit A – how some of our country’s best paid bankers were overrated dopes who had no idea what they were selling, or greedy cynics who did know and turned a blind eye. But it wasn’t only the bankers. This financial meltdown involved a broad national breakdown in personal responsibility, government regulation and financial ethics.”
The thing I guess that amazes me is that there were so many people in on all of this, people who had no business buying a home, with nothing down and nothing to pay for two years! People who had no business pushing such mortgages, but made a fortune doing so; people who had no business bundling those loans into securities and selling them to third parties as if they were AAA bonds, but made a fortune doing so; people who had no business buying those bonds and putting them on their balance sheets so they could earn a little better yield, but made fortunes doing so.
That’s just some of how we got where we are today – almost a total breakdown of responsibility at every link in our financial chain, and now we either bail out the people who brought us here or risk a total systemic crash. These are the wages of our sins. Friedman says he used to say our kids will pay dearly for this. But actually, it’s our problem. For the next few years we’re all going to be working harder for less money and fewer government services – if we’re lucky!
So, with those cheerful thoughts, let me again wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!
Sylvia's world in thoughts and pictures
I miss you Sam!!
I miss you Sam!!
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What Can I Say?
I'm interested in almost everything. Use to like to travel, but it's too expensive now. I take Tai Chi classes, swim, volunteer in a Jump-start program for pre-schoolers. I'm an avid reader and like nearly everyone these days I follow politics avidly. I'm a former teacher and Special Projects Coordinator for a Telecommunications company, Assistant to the President of a Japanese silicon wafer manufacturing company. Am now enjoying retirement -- most of the time. I have two daughters, one son-in-law and two sons scattered all over the country. No grandchildren.
3 comments:
As I have said so many time before...capitalism is greed driven.
The rich will do anything they can get away with to make a buck...at the expense of all the rest of us. They could care less about middle America...as long as they get theirs.
I saw his piece also. The thing is it isn't a screw up if like in Zeitgeist, it was intended. Some made a lot of money and like wolves, they wait for the right moment to profit from the starving off of others. We, the middle class, have been the victims and hopefully Obama means what he says about his programs being for the middle class. There are those who want the middle class to disappear leaving them control over the poorer to use for labor and not wanting power in a bourgeoisie middle. We keep thinking this has been a big goof up... Maybe somebody out there, a lot of somebodys, is chuckling about how well it worked. Bush would have been clueless... or was he?
Sylvia,
I didn't read this yet but I saw Eric Dash speak on the economy a few days ago and he's brilliant.
I recall at one point paying attention to adds for no money down mortgages and was immediately suspicious. It just sounded too good to be true. I owned a home then, with a traditional, affordable mortgage that was acquired with a lot of hard work, some help from parents and sound judgment about how much "house" we could afford. How did all that get thrown out the window so quickly by so many people?? I guess when people desparetely want to own their own home, they get sucked into the vortex that of the greedy companies you mention.
I hate it that the auto companies are begging their way out of a mess that was in part their own doing and I agree with you: we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. What a predicament we're in. Ugh.
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