Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Audacity of Greed

People don't work on Wall Street or even generally invest in the stock market to better the conditions of humankind and life on Earth. Investments are not often the stuff of altruism.

Wall Street is about greed, as in "greed is good."

And so what do we expect?

President Obama reprimanded Wall Street scions today for taking $20 billion in bonuses last year, even when there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Of course they would take those bonuses. And run.

It's a money brothel, not a volunteer fire department.

It's a greed machine, not the Peace Corps.

It's: "Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what the American brand (and loop holes) of the "free market" can do for you.

The lion that is the audacity of greed makes the audacity of hope seem like a mouse.

And so, will real change come?

A change of values? Against the grain of human nature?

5 Comments:

At 1/29/2009 9:18 PM, Blogger Lawrence said...

Obama called it "the height of irresponsibility," and went on to say, "It is shameful... And part of what we're going to need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint, and show some discipline, and show some sense of responsibility."

What about in companies loosing money, everybody making more than twice the poverty level takes a pay cut and the executives have their pay cut by at least a third or half? And that's BEFORE asking for any assistance!

 
At 1/30/2009 3:06 PM, Blogger Allan Stellar said...

Good to see you back writing again!

How much does the economic system influence human nature? Might what we see as human nature being greedy and selfcentric be a result of American Style Capitalism? Is a new Socialist Human possible much like the "New Man" that St. Paul talks about?

Human nature changes. Cultures change. If it didn't, Rosa Parks would still be riding on the back of the bus. And Obama wouldn't have received 44% of the White Vote.

Wall Street can change. It just needs Banks to be nationalized; regulations established; progressive taxation; and a cultural shift away from "affluenzia" as you called it earlier.

 
At 1/31/2009 8:13 AM, Blogger Cancer Child said...

If people are hurting enough, there will be riots in the streets. We have all been fed a steady diet of the American Dream since we were tots, and therefor when fat cats threaten to take that away from us through greed we will protest and revolt. (I know I'm revolting) It's one thing to have a (former) president who acts like pond scum, but when parents can't put food on the table for their children and have no place to go when they are evicted, while the people who helped get us here are eating cake-- well we all know how that story ends. One way or another, the situation will change. By the way, does anyone have a guillotine they want to sell?

 
At 3/21/2009 9:16 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Everyone wants to revive the economy but we should be careful what sort of economy we revive. We should not revive the recent deviant economy. That economy was based on untrustworthy derivative investment. These investments were easily tabulated by computer but lacked autheticated value. Greed, a perennial motivation, was not as relevant to collapse as default reliance on computer tracking and electronic, shell game, transfer.

The economy that we need to revive is a modern barter economy using computer accounting and electronic transfer to record and exchange billable hours and physical products.

 
At 9/24/2011 8:19 AM, Blogger Zarg Hardwaggon said...

Gordon Gecko has more economic influence on this country than the whole of its people.

http://kamikazeearth.blogspot.com/

Andy~

 

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