The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Economics => Topic started by: BlueStateSaint on October 13, 2008, 10:54:24 AM
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Yeah, I know it's a couple of days ago, and it's the New York Times, but it's also Ben Stein. He seems to know his stuff . . .
Everybody’s Business
Fear and Loathing in La Jolla
By BEN STEIN
Published: October 11, 2008
I lived with them on Montague Street
In a basement down the stairs.
There was music in the cafes at night,
And revolution in the air.
— Bob Dylan,
“Tangled Up in Blueâ€
A FEW days ago, I spoke to a large gathering of investors in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, and was startled by the audience’s furious anger at the powers that be. The Wall Street-Treasury-Federal Reserve axis is hated, loathed and feared by these people, who were, as far as I could tell, largely Republicans, almost all well to do — or formerly well to do. They are in a state of extreme agitation about how the current mismanagement of our financial system has played havoc with their own personal financial situation.
In fact, they are among the angriest upper- and middle-class people I have ever seen. And the most frightened and worried. (In a way, they are now feeling the way ordinary workers have been feeling for years.)
And why not? With the experiment of allowing a major investment bank, Lehman Brothers, to simply vanish, leaving huge holes in the portfolios of many other financial entities, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, threw the financial system into chaos.
Yes, some people at Lehman undoubtedly did some bad things, but those kinds of people are found everywhere. Letting Lehman fail was almost incomprehensible. It took the federal government many decades, after the banking collapse leading to the Great Depression, to restore confidence in the financial system. Then, in one horribly misguided moment, Mr. Paulson, with the apparent agreement of Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, demolished that confidence.
The very last sentence of the article is telling . . .
As the song goes, there is revolution in the air.
Ruh-roh!
The link is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/business/12every.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin
I found this article courtesy of UrbanSurvival.com . . .
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Paulson and Bernacke have not handled this well at all and I doubt it will get much better.