A hilarious column from Michael Lewis that’s too good to excerpt. Lewis has the rare gift of two-sided satire, by which he can simultamneously needle both Wall Street’s traditional mindset and the fools on Capitol Hill who want to change it. The serious question underlying his Swiftian proposal is whether the big financial firms can regain their health if they have to willingly submit to political micromanagement of all their decisions.
2 thoughts on “BUSINESS/ Man Up, Wall Street”
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Ronald Reagan was a shithead (Who knew?). He thought “welfare queens” were stealing tax money, when anyone with a modicum of common sense and eyesight knows the thieves were on Wall Street.
I like Lewis’ writing in general. This was a stretch into PJ O’Rourke territory. He ain’t PJ.
As a old friend of my dad’s used to say, in similar situations, “he’s Gorilla Monsoon until something goes wrong.” The testicular fortitude necessary to continue rhinoing through tough times just isn’t there. It never was.
The tricky part in managing this era will be striking the balance between giving the banks the latitude to do their jobs versus entirely removing the risk in failure.
A friend of mine justified the huge bonuses and salaries of financial types by stating the enormous risks they undertook. When those risks turn to crap, it pisses me off that my tax dollars are bailing them out. On the flip side, their failure (by they, I mean the banking industry) will hurt me from several different fronts. In the end, there’s going to be pain for many people.
I also tend to think that the more fingerprints there are on any plan, the worse it tends to be. Perhaps Malcolm Gladwell can figure out the optimum number of people to work out any single piece of legislation.
What the hell was my point? Oh yeah, Lewis isn’t that funny.