The Great Boomer Comeuppance |
Richard Berry in an article for The American Thinker, says what I have long thought. That segment of the Baby Boom generation that thinks of itself as “Masters of the Universe” and that rose to power in the 1990’s and took over an overwhelming majority of the prestigious universities, the storied Wall Street firms, Mainstream Media and most of our cultural institutions, has just fell flat on it’s collective face.
The same folks that told us that a brave new world beckoned, with untold riches and the fulfillment of our fondest dreams within our grasp, if only we abandoned the outmoded disciplines of thrift, conservative investment strategies, prudence and diligent research, have just made a $3 trillion mess. A mess that they now fully expect the rest of us to clean up. We have been placed in a position so dangerous to our nation’s financial system and by extension, the world’s financial system, that whether we like it or not, we will have to get out the dust pan, the broom, the vacuum sweeper and the steam cleaner and restore the carpeting to it’s original condition.
Once the carpet clean up begins, another clean up should begin. The one that entails going after the people that looted the financial system and prosecuting them for fraud, possibly “fraudulent conveyance” and a whole host of other law breaking and regulation skirting that has gone on in this country for far too long. This process should entail the recapture of the obscene bonuses, golden parachutes and stock profits that were made possible by “cooking the books.”
We must make it abundantly clear to the next generation of wannabe pirates that: 1. We will return to the rule of law 2. Regulators will henceforth actually regulate 3. If you attempt to loot the system, you will be prosecuted into the Stone Age and finally, 4. You will spend a good chunk of the rest of your life in the Big House.
Hopefully, once we have finally learned how to properly motivate the financial criminal class, we may not be able to change their hearts, but we will be able to change their behavior.
~~John Cronin~~
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2097915/posts
The American Thinker
By: Richard Berry
Tags: Baby Boomers, Financial Crisis, Masters of the UniverseMy cohort, the sainted Boomer generation, now rules this country and its institutions. The elite of this generation, graduates of the finest schools, cosmopolitan in taste and sensibility, and left-liberal in political and cultural allegiance — have always been counted the smartest people in the room (just ask them).
Now these new Masters of the Universe have made a shambles of the US and world financial system. This is, to be sure, not the construction put upon things by the main stream media, but it is plainly the case. The current market turmoil is a product of every bad trait the Boomer Elite has long exhibited in other social and political contexts: unbridled greed and hubris, exorbitant self-regard, breathtaking recklessness, insatiable appetite for immediate gratification, and a rollicking sense of entitlement.
We are seeing in the Wall Street implosion the inevitable result of the Boomer Elite outlook and the behavior it spawned. Storied investment banks were being run on 40 to 1 leverage. Fancy new securities were designed and widely disseminated whose terms are opaque even to highly knowledgeable and experienced hands. Mortgage securitization techniques were developed which, our bettors assured us, would magically spread risk and thus stabilize the financial system. However, simultaneously with these brilliant innovations, lenders were being forced — by Boomer Elite congressmen with an aching love of the poor and oppressed unique to themselves — to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers at subprime rates and without adequate documentation. These loans, packaged into securities together with standard, performing loans, rendered unknowable the value of the securities, leading to mandatory write downs and drastic capital impairment or outright insolvency for many very large firms. Given the high degree of integration of the international financial system, critical destabilization was the real result of this confluence of Master of the Universe genius and Boomer Elite turpitude.
The unwillingness of the rest of us to underwrite the moral excesses of the Boomer Elite perfectly enrages them. So, today, the rest of us are being screamed at. In fact, the barrel of a gun is being pressed to our temple. It is demanded that we play our accustomed role of sheep to the slaughter. We are told we must funnel the better part of a trillion dollars to the fantastically imprudent, self-dealing Wall Streeters that gave us the mess, and that we must also chip in the odd tens of billions more on pet lefty projects with which the Boomer Elite, with characteristic cynicism, lard up the package.
Our efforts to be responsible citizens in this crisis are ridiculed and shouted down: exclude from the bail-out the pork and the payoffs to interest groups? How dare we! Include measures that might actually spur badly needed growth in the tough times now surely coming, like cuts in capital gains and corporate taxes? Leave the room!
This is all merely typical of the smug, cocksure Boomer Elite. This is a group that breaks things. It has set the wrecking ball to institutions that are the essential glue of our society (marriage and the family), the basis of our political system (federalism and the separation of powers), the engine of our prosperity (the free market), the guarantor of our freedom (the military), and the glory of our history (the Constitution, participatory democracy).
Although our Masters of the Universe insist we credit them as moral paragons, they are among the most luxury loving, wealth flaunting population ever seen in the world. Whenever a Hollywood celebutard mouths some perfect imbecility in front of a camera, it is sure to be done from a five star resort hotel or on the red carpet of one of those absurdly frequent self-congratulation festivals. The silk tie, moussed hair crowd on Wall Street is no better. If the extent of the naked short selling, self dealing and market manipulation that has actually gone on these last few years were ever to become generally known, it would indict this crew all by itself. And it cannot be said enough: this crowd is heavily on the left and mostly in the Democratic Party. The cigar chomping, pin-striped caricature of a GOP money man has been false to the Wall Street facts for some time, though the left continues to furiously peddle that image.