And that someone is Fareed Zakaria, in columns published in the Washington Post (“Cool the Goldman Rage”) and in the Post-owned Newsweek. Zakaria is unimpressed by the SEC’s fraud case against Goldman Sachs; he likens the firm’s mortgage securities bonds to someone placing a bet against the New York Yankees.
Then he writes:
But the rage surrounding the Goldman case can cloud our perspective and distort public policy. We’re going through a familiar part of America’s boom-and-bust cycle. Having been mesmerized during the go-go years, having unduly lionized and feted industries, firms, and people as they rode the wave, we now want to throw these people to the wolves.
Hold on a second. Who is the “we” that “lionized and feted industries, firms, and people as they rode the wave”? How many people spent the last decade shouting, “Let’s hear it for Wall Street, everyone!” Talk about a clouded perspective.
I am a former Executive Director of the World Bank (2002-2004) and already in 1999 I had written:
â┚¬Ã…“The possible Big Bang that scares me the most is the one that could happen the day those genius bank regulators in Basel, playing Gods, manage to introduce a systemic error in the financial system, which will cause the collapse of the OWB (the only bank in the world) or of the financial dinosaur that survives at that moment. Currently market forces favors the larger the entity is, be it banks, law firms, auditing firms, brokers, etc. Perhaps one of the things that the authorities could do, in order to diversify risks, is to create a tax on size.â┚¬Ã‚Â
I spoke frequently about this issue in the World Bank, but few wanted to hear me out. In January 2003 though I was able to have the Financial Times publish a letter I sent them and that concluded in â┚¬Ã…“Everyone knows that, sooner or later, the ratings issued by the credit agencies are just a new breed of systemic error to be propagated at modern speeds.â┚¬Ã‚Â
Indeed I believe that, like few others, I have some very special credentials to as to be allowed to explain the current financial crisis to all non-experts, dummies and financial regulatorsâ┚¬Ã‚¦ please! http://bit.ly/bniNuD
With that “we” and that exact argument he’s plagiarizing the NYT’s hack Sorkin. (And probably many others I haven’t had the misfortune to read.)
As for placing a bet on sports, yeah, it’s a lot like that. So why is it legal? Why is it allowed to be a “contract”? Bring back the bucket laws.
The most disgusting and psychopathic part of it is how he treats it like a game among the rich, and laughs at the horrific suffering these crimes have already inflicted upon the non-rich, suffering which will only get worse.
That’s one of the characteristic crimes of Zakaria and his cadre.
I was wondering if FAIR would jump on Fareeds Screed (has a nice ring to it huh) and rip this hack article up. Nice work gang!!!
I’m also unimpressed with the Obama cover-up civil charges re Goldman. Obama got 7 times the cash from Goldman that Bush got from Halliburton. I want to see these crooks in jail forever.
“Fareed Zakaria likens GS securities bonds to someone placing a bet against the New York Yankees.”
No Fareed, it’s not like “someone” placing a bet against the NYY. It’s like the Steinbrenner family betting against the Yankees at the same time they are frantically sell season tickets. It’s ugly and speaks volumes about our society that journalists try to defend these actions.
You are only partially right medlaw. It’s like the Steinbrenner family betting against the Yankees at the same time they are frantically selling season tickets AND simultaneously PAYING the MVPs to THROW the game.
Re: PUR KUROWSKI’s comment stating, “Currently market forces [favor] the larger the entity is…”
As a non-expert, a dummy, an ignorant tax-paying nincompoop I’m wondering why a person of his lofty status who has “very special credentials” and obvious self-admitted uber-genius extrapolating insightful abilities doesn’t perceive that CURRENTLY market forces ARE CONTROLLED BY the very largest entities which are “favored” and abetted by members of Congress, Administrations and most recently, THE SUPREME COURT. Perhaps the closing statement in his letter published by the Financial Times was simply not comprehended by the majority who did not hear him out, let alone the hoi polloi, we common folk, the great faceless unwashed who faithfully pay their taxes so that the movers and shakers who control those largest entities (including “our” government) can give themselves enormous obscene bonuses to reward their “technically legal,” unethical, might I say in a sense “quasi-criminal” perhaps?, financially self-aggrandizing, white collar, not-even-slap-on-the-wrist deeds. Of course they DID have to appear before Congress to receive a “good talking to.” That had to hurt! I do apologize for my patently misdirected, brazen, un-called-for verbal spanking and by possibly maligning a few unnamed businessmen/business women/publicly-perceived upstanding altruistic government leaders or biased pundits. I above all sincerely apologize for most likely misinterpreting Mr. Kurowski’s comment. Dummies, non-experts (as I am) and clueless financial regulators just don’t “get it.”
Actually it’s like betting on the Yankees to lose after paying key players to throw the game. Even more illegal than the actual betting.
P.S. I see that Medlaw & Laura Nason already covered that base. My error [pun intended].
Don’t forget who this shrill works for. He works for the same corporate media as Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, and the rest of these stooges that would probably sell their own mother out if the price was right.
How much do you think Goldman Sachs would pay or have already paid for Fareed’s kiss up add?
American people have been very slow in realizing the devistatingly negative effect our corporate media has played in the downfall of the American middle class. The corporate media lie to us day in and day out.
White America in particular are so quick to beleive the distortions, half truths, and propaganda broadcast to us. The Reagan revolution was successful in brainwashing the majority of people to go against and then continually to vote against their best interest.
In understanding the nature of the structural changes that have occurred in the global economy, it is important to understand the shift that has occurred between the real economy and the speculative economy. In an article entitled â┚¬Ã…“From the Real Economy to the Speculative,â┚¬Ã‚ Bernard Lietaer explains the distinction between the real and speculative economy and the shift that has occurred:
â┚¬Ã…“In 1975, about 80 percent of foreign exchange transactions (where one national currency is exchanged for another) were to conduct business in the real economy. For instance, currencies change hands to import oil, export cars, buy corporations, invest in portfolios, or build factories. Real transactions actually produce or trade goods and services. The remaining 20 percent of transactions in 1975 were speculative, which means that the sole purpose was an expected profit from buying and selling currencies themselves, based on their changing valuesâ┚¬Ã‚¦
â┚¬Ã‚¦Today the real economy in foreign exchange transactions is down to 2.5 percent and 97.5 percent is now speculative.â┚¬Ã‚Â
This monstrosity of global speculation and currency trading has no allegiance to anything other than profit and the perverted thing is that market instability is how these vultures profit. As Litaer puts it:
â┚¬Ã…“Big fluctuations in the values of currencies allow for big profits to be made by trading them. Consider the following statements by leaders at opposite ends of the spectrum:
â┚¬Ã…“The biggest concern today is the growing constituency for instability.â┚¬Ã‚Â
– Paul Volcker, ex-governor of the Federal Reserve, in Changing Fortunes.
â┚¬Ã…“Instability is cumulative, so that the eventual breakdown of freely floating exchanges is ensured.â┚¬Ã‚Â
– George Soros, the largest currency speculator today, in The Alchemy of Finance.
They both agreed that there are many more people now who have an interest in profiting from instability; previously, they had an interest in stability. If you have an unstable system, it is just a question of when it will fly off the handle. It will blow apart at the moment when the U.S. dollar experiences a crisis. When the dollar crisis occurs, the world will have no system leftâ┚¬Ã‚¦
â┚¬Ã‚¦In the 1929 crash, the monetary system held. We had all kinds of other problems â┚¬“ unemployment, stock market crash, currency inflation in Germany â┚¬“ but there was a gold standard that held. Today, we have no gold standard to fall back on. So there is no precedent for a collapse of this nature. And this would be a truly global phenomenon. All currencies in the world are based on the dollar. So if you have a crisis on the dollar, you pull out the linchpin andâ┚¬Ã‚¦boom.â┚¬Ã‚Â
In â┚¬Ã…“Troubling Truths about the Global Economy,â┚¬Ã‚ David Korten concludes by saying:
â┚¬Ã…“Correcting the massive dysfunction that economic globalization has created will not be easy. The starting point must be a clear recognition that this dysfunction is inherent in a globalized economic system. We should also be clear that this system was put in place through intentional policy choices orchestrated by the powerful and well-organized economic interests that benefited from it. We can just as well put in place policies that result in a sharing of the benefits of technological change, and return both economic and political power to the local communities where people live and work.
This will require people and communities to recognize that their interests are better served by international cooperation than by global competition. Through cooperation we can put in place policies that create a bias in favor of local rather than global capital and productions systems, help us to move toward greater equity, protect the environment, nurture cultural diversity and exchange, raise living standards, and share experience knowledge, and technologies to the benefit of all people everywhere.â┚¬Ã‚Â
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals, we know now that is bad economics.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We must not live for ourselves alone, but should also serve others, never forgetting the children, the aged, the poor, the suffering, the disabled, the refugees, and the lonely. No person should ever be considered or treated as a second-class citizen or be exploited in any way whatsoever.
– From the “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic” by the Parliament for the World’s Religions
“We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
– Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, October 17, 1941
“The only real struggle in the history of the world…is between the vested interest and social justice.â┚¬Ã‚Â
– Arnold Tonybee, historian
“Don’t mourn, organize”
– Joe Hill
Somebody must have been “lionizing” those people and firms. After all, that was quite a wave.