The Low Spark of High -Finance

Poof, she goes to dust,does Lehmann. Now why is this treated in any other way by the powers that be than the Tricksters and Hustlers who con people into giving them their hard earned money, promising good returns and then vanishing without trace? Cases of Fraud of this nature are commonly tried in lower courts in the USA everyday. The Discovery Channel also has a series of shows about them. Somehow when the trickery is on the scale of trillions of dollars, and the beneficiaries are rock-star finance men and other high-profile persona, all is forgotten and the Central Bank just pours in some taxpayer cash and slaps a few wrists, tut-tuts the management and moves on with life. Why isn't the entire board of directors in Lehman in jail? Or for that matter AIG or Merrill? 700 billion in debt??? Who loans that kind of money to other parties? What kind of warped reality was being promised by these institutions to each other? Alas, I have not the answers to such deep and complicated questions. To do so, I'd have to be part of the machine.

It just goes to prove that Liberal Democracy/Capitalism and all the other happy-horseshit schools of thought are at the end of the day Old Boys Clubs. (Much like the alternatives, Communism etc) When you're in, your fine and when you're out you don't matter. Wall Street is the biggest and most dangerous frat house on the face of the earth (Sigma Omega Sigma, if there is such a house). A close second is the US Republican Party.Or the other way around.

The other concern about free market capitalism is that it is too skewed on the upside. The implication here is that business is allowed to take risk with other's money and then reap rewards and then use other's money as a get-out-of-jail free card when things go belly up. Heads I win, Tails you Lose. I'm trying hard not to defend socialism, but please explain how this creates value.

What can one do? Many things, I think. Part of the problem is that upsides are unfairly rewarded. In any highly volatile business, one should stow away cash assuming a downturn will occur sooner or later. As a philosophical option, Governments should progressively increase taxation to riduculous numbers as the upsides of banks go higher and higher. And this should only be done to banks and not general businesses. Why, you ask? Simply because a significant portion of dramatic upsides in traditional asset-heavy business are re-invested in the concern itself. No one takes the extra cash as corpulent bonus payouts. Is there a downside to this heavy taxation? Of course there is..it will deter financial innovation. Translated, it means it will cramp the style of financial yahoos and prevent them from taking too many risks. And how exactly is that a problem?