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By Lawrence Swaim, IFN Columnist
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Tuesday, 12 January 2010 |
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Page 1 of 2 In one of Edward Kennedy’s toughest speeches against corporate speculation, he pounded the lectern with his fist and shouted rhetorically, “When will the greed end?”
Indeed, the recent collapse of the Wall Street credit markets was the direct result of unconscionable gambling with the savings and pensions of the American middle class. Those in the corporate upper class who plundered and finally brought down the great financial institutions of Wall Street sought not merely to improve themselves through productive commerce, which is the right of all men and women; rather they made a deal with the Devil, maximizing their own profit in the short term while guaranteeing ultimate ruin for everybody else. This Faustian bargain was a disaster for all Americans who had put their trust in the economic system.
The shenanigans of the credit “experts” remind me of a story I heard from my grandmother, who heard it from her father, who was a champion fiddler in the Ozarks. There was a small town in the mountains, he said, that suffered perennial hard times. Finally the denizens of the little village stumbled upon the perfect economic directive for their economic salvation. “I’ll take in the washing of my neighbor, and each week he’ll pay me,” said the town’s mayor. “He’ll take in my washing, and I’ll pay him. We’ll all take in each others’ washing, and that way we’ll all have money!”
Too much American commerce, I say, is in a similar dilemma. Our economy is not producing real goods and services, but depends on the recycling of capital. Too many Americans work in the service industries and live on credit; and the erosion of basic industry in the American heartland has shifted economic power to speculators at the highest level of the corporate upper class. Sadly, there are few traditions of moral restraint in American business — instead, there is a widespread belief that greed is good, that its excesses can be smoothed over by the long-term workings of the market.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 03 February 2010 )
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