Tag: markets

Commentary: Markets need morals and regulators need muscle

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) – “Is the entire stock market (and the system it supports) completely corrupted?”

When that question appeared in a recent MarketWatch poll, 76% of the nearly 1,400 respondents agreed with: “Yes, it’s legalized theft.”

Legalized theft? Like the bribes Mexican police demand or the taxes dictators seize to build villas? Investors think the stock market is theft?

http://www.marketwatch.com/sto…

And the answer given is that the investors are surely right in the headline article in a business site that obviously leans right.

Huh?

Kos and Ed [Schulze] and most anyone that has even a pretense to liberal credentials says we gotta go along with the most egregious corruption and a rightwing business source says that is wrong?

Has the world turned upside down again?

Of course it’s nonsensical to expect businesses in the hunt for money to place a high priority on morality except as a business tactic.  It is akin to asking coyotes to stop eating sheep.

The real problem is the like of Kos and Ed seeking love in all the wrong places and, in a different vein, the same could be said of Obama and Pelosi. Even the wingers are scandalized.

Best,  Terry

Stirling Newberry coined a brilliant phrase a few years ago: “A bubble is the monetization of stupidity.” Looking at the growing evidence of a financial meltdown in the US economy, I would argue for a broader assertion: recent American prosperity has been based on the monetization of dishonesty. Ever since the savings and loan scandal of the Reagan years, large-scale financial corruption seems to have become endemic to the US economy. This diary lists some of the evidence and addresses the unpleasant conclusions.