“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is who made all the lousy decisions leading up to the banking disaster of 2008, and how the government was out to lunch during the entire bailout, and all that Neil Barofsky kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into the blame game, if you want to know the truth.”
Holden Caulfield won’t weigh in on banking reform. But I’m sure he’d strike the right tone of frustration with attempts, either from government or Wall Street, to fix our finances. Do you get the sense it’s like one massive free-for-all out there? Where the combatants, all snarling and backbiting each another, will stymie true and productive reform and turn it “phony?”
- First, we have governments gorging at the trough of populist outrage. The US is considering a $120 billion levy on banks. The UK is taxing 2009 bank bonuses at 50 percent. And Jean-Claude Trichet, in an uncharacteristic display of support from a French civil servant, says the US regulatory plans are “relevant and interesting.” At least I think that’s support.
- Then, we have the investigations. There’s Congress. They’re hopping mad about the Fed’s indirect payments to AIG counterparties during the bailout. There’s Neil Barofsky. He’s trying to piece together what happened: why the Fed won’t disclose more details; or why Goldman’s alumni were everywhere as the bailout deals (and the markets) were going down.
- And finally we have the bankers, who are clueless when it comes to courting public opinion. The decision to pay monster bonuses on 2009 earnings ranks as Wall Street’s biggest mistake in fifty years. Now, financiers can’t say or do anything right, which is a problem because they’re the ones who will be taxed and regulated, their organizations dismantled. Or is it dismembered?
The problem with a melee is nobody wins. Can anybody out there strike the right tone—a mix between cooperation and the reform our financial sector so desperately needs?
The New York Times describes my novels as “money porn,” “a red-hot franchise,” and “glittery thrillers about fiscal malfeasance.” Through fiction I explore the dark side of money and the motivations of those who have it, want more, and will steamroll anybody who gets in their way.
Between your blogs and your book I feel like I’m beginning to wrap my mind around how the world of finance actually works, in an albeit superficial way . That, of course, in no way qualifies me to toss my two cents in (two cents being a laughable offering to the Gods of finance, anyway), but having read both The Catcher in the Rye and the Bonfire of the Vanities more times than I can count I feel that I can say one thing with some confidence; you, my friend, are no god@!&n bourgeois! I never imagined reading a financial blog and staying awake until the end, much less laughing out loud. Keep it up!
Thanks, Erin. You’re the best. “God@!&n” was Holden’s other favorite word, right?
Ha ha…yeah, in so many symbols, anyway. It’s unfortunate that some people couldn’t get past that phrase long enough to enjoy one of the best books ever written (in my humble opinion, that is).
The language is mild if you ask me. At leas these days.
Oh it’s very mild…I just think the religious connotations of that one particular word made some people uncomfortable. I’ve known two people that put it down because of that very reason, and my own father who’s a retired journalist and has absolutely no problem dropping the occasional F-Bomb, even admitted that while he loved the book, he could have gone without “so many G.D.s” (he wouldn’t even say the word out loud!).
Ah, superstition. Words, like many things, only have as much power as we assign to them.