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Weekly Audit: The Battle for Wall Street Begins

by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Blogger

"I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans. I'm talking about a moral deficit . . . . We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit; when mothers can't afford a doctor when their children get sick."

-Sen. Barack Obama, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Jan. 20, 2008

Wall Street issues report, concludes: "Oops! Our bad!"

According to the New York Times, a group of Wall Street executives have released a report detailing what went wrong and steps they can take to prevent it from hapening again. OK, quit laughing.

According to the article: 

"Wall Street failed to anticipate how wide-reaching problems with mortgage bonds would spread into seemingly distant corners of the financial markets, the report said. Awash in easy money, banks doled out credit without sufficiently charging for the risk. Wall Street also created complex structures that masked connections between asset classes as well as compensation incentives that pushed traders to take risky steps for short-term gain. The industry’s failings have now translated into pain for the broader economy, the report said."

Ya’ think?

Why the push to failure?

Failure in war can be a bad thing. Failure in business can be a personal loss, and in some instances a detriment to the economy. With the recent calamity hitting the two largest mortgage lenders, not to mention other large American business concerns, it seems to a select few that failure is indeed a viable and good option.

A gamble with very high stakes is being openly promoted by adherents to a free-market orthodoxy. These individuals, gaming on anger and the perceived loss of utility of these given enterprises, are pushing the public onto this wager.

The Looting Of America

Submitted by on

Who's to blame for the economy?
It's not just a political question, it's an economic question as well. It is essential that this question be answered because without an answer we won't know what to do to fix it.

Remember 1999? The federal budget was balanced. The trade deficit was still manageable. The unemployment rate was low, as was the poverty rate. There were plenty of good paying jobs out there. Corporations were making record profits.

It was also the year that the economy was broken.

"Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters."
- email sent Dec. 15, 2006, from one rating agency to another

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