The fastest way to real reform

[Old Codger]

But every now and then, something comes along and slaps you into contemplating the other side of all this wonder. For me, last week, it came from a book excerpt in Vanity Fair called "Lehman's Desperate Housewives." The story seems to be trying to make us feel sorry for the spouses (spice?) of the Lehman Brothers executives who helped crash the economy. Here's a snippet about the miseries they suffered during Lehman's annual corporate retreat at Sun Valley. "The trip was always 'an absolute nightmare to pack for.' The evenings required pretty dresses, jewelry and Manolo Blahnik shoes, while hiking gear was needed for the days, as well as 'day clothes' for the mornings spent antiquing."

Still, that wasn't the section that dropped my jaw. This was:


Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/financial-reform-2010-033010#ixzz0jlR3gcmF




Karin and Brad remember when one of their children had a seizure brought on by a high fever. That day they were scheduled to look at the new house Joe Gregory, then the co-C.O.O. with Jack, was building on Long Island. "It was just the six of us — Dick, Joe, Brad, and the wives," says Karin. "We were using Joe's helicopter. But I said, 'I have to take my son to the pediatrician.' So they landed the Sikorsky near our home and waited for me, and they were not leaving without me. Can you imagine the pressure? I have this really sick child, but I know that if I don't get on that helicopter it's going to hurt Brad." Brad agrees that it would have hurt him had Karin not gotten into the helicopter. "This is the price that no one ever talks about," he says.

The term for this is "moral bankruptcy," which is the title of this terrific little article in Mother Jones by Joseph Stiglitz, the great American economist who won the Nobel Prize in 2001. "It is said that a near-death experience forces one to reevaluate priorities and values," Stiglitz begins. "The global economy has just escaped a near-death experience. The crisis exposed the flaws in the prevailing economic model, but it also exposed flaws in our society."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/financial-reform-2010-033010#ixzz0jlQXW3uE





The financial sector worked hard to stop predatory lending laws, to gut consumer protection laws, and to ensure that the federal government's ever laxer standards overrode state regulation. Their ideal scenario, it seems, is to have the kind of regulation that doesn't prevent them from doing anything, but allows them to say, in case of any problems that they assumed everything was okay — because it was done within the law.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/financial-reform-2010-033010#ixzz0jlQMNEzu







http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/financial-reform-2010-033010