Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
Having worked next to people who represented big banks, perhaps I'm conflicted, but a very big part of the reason why very few (not none, despite what you will hear from Bernie) went to jail is because there wasn't much crime there to prosecute.
Colossally stupid risk taking isn't a crime.
Woulda helped had not the left been running around saying all bankers are crooks and poo pooing the settlements that the regulators actually made.
ETA: Which isn't to say they shouldn't have been tougher. They probably should have, but again, as Sebby's pointing out, we were in the middle of a precarious effort to keep the banking (and shadow banking) sector alive, which would have been harder to do with more bankers in handcuffs.
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In a just world, willful ignorance, or "dancing to the music" as Charles Prince put it, would at least expose one to a clawback.
But we live in a deeply manipulated world -- one where might absolutely makes right.
The frustration at this is why we have Trump and Bernie, and why Hillary, establishment candidate, lost. Life isn't fair, but some semblance of the myth it is, or that the people in charge are at least attempting to create an even playing field, needs to persist.
We've no capacity to resuscitate Plato's Noble Lie anymore. Charlie Rangel nailed it when he said if we had a draft, what we'd get would be a civil war.
People fear Trump's bullshit. But his bullshit isn't really the problem. The problem is, by bullshitting so much, he's destroying any chance of people in charge ever being able to spin the necessary myths that kept society in order.
The phenomenon of the powerful losing the ability to lie to those below and have the proles believe it long predates Trump. I'd say it started with Watergate, and then the Internet, and the Iraq War lies, pretty much destroyed the power structure's credibility. But Trump is the ultimate cherry on the sundae -- bullshit to the tenth power... himself The End of Bullshit, yet covered in so much bullshit, no one spotted the irony.
But now that those at the top, the managers, the alleged "elite," can no longer bullshit the people anymore, now that the people are near entirely cynical (as they should be), and the Internet near instantly exposes the rot behind every attempted lie, what's Plan B? "Fuel the jet for New Zealand?"
