“The problem really is exactly as bad as the ‘banker bashers’ believe”

[Scuba]

http://www.toobighasfailed.org/2013/07/10/joris-luyendijk/

Journalist Joris Luyendijk After Interviewing 70+ Investment Bankers: “The problem really is exactly as bad as the ‘banker bashers’ believe”

Before studying bankers I spent many years researching Islam and Muslims. I set out with images in my mind of angry bearded men burning American flags, but as the years went by I became more and more optimistic: beyond the frightening rhetoric and sensationalist television footage, ordinary Muslim people go about their day like all other human beings. The problem of radical Islam is smaller and more containable than Islamophobes believe.

With bankers I have experienced an opposite trajectory. I started with the reassuring images in my mind of well-dressed bankers and their lobbyists; surely at some basic level these people knew what they were doing? But after two years I feel myself becoming deeply pessimistic and genuinely terrified. This system is highly dysfunctional, deeply entrenched, and enormously abusive, both to its own workers and the society it operates in. The problem really is exactly as bad as the “banker bashers” believe.

...

Luyendijk calls for “smaller banks, … simpler financial products, and much higher capital requirements” and we called for the same things when we say we should break up the banks, reform derivatives, and raise equity levels. These are three relatively simple reforms that would go a long way to making the financial system much safer and ending too big to fail. Plus, each citizen has the power to change banks and support local lenders.

We recommend reading Luyendijk’s interviews, which include gems like an executive coach saying, “Finance is an amoral world, bordering on the immoral,” a former rating agency worker saying, “we don’t seem to have learned from the crisis. It’s back to business as usual,” and a risk consultant saying, “My sense is that a lot of people in finance hate what they do. There’s no passion. But they are trapped by the money.”

[Octafish]

1. None Too Big to Jail

Thank you, Scuba. Outstanding article on the situation.

Those interested in someone who can straighten out the sorry mess:

William K. Black

[leftstreet]

2. DURec

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. K&R. Thanks for posting but, no shit Sherlock? How many degrees, how many Nobel Prizes,

how many predicted collapses, before people start listening to people that are in the habit of being right?

Those of us that pay attention to current events and have an understanding of economics have been telling you for at least twenty years that this is really, really bad. But you just go on supporting thieving assholes that are getting richer and richer while you get poorer and poorer.

Neither party has any interest in making your pathetic life better. President Obama created the Goldman-Sachs White House. Nancy Pelosi blocked every avenue to justice. Boner has spent the last 3 years sucking every corporate cock in sight. Not one of the criminals that have fucked the world and made off with the treasury has even been investigated. Hell some of them have new jobs in the West Wing

I've some to the conclusion that the patient is is a self-induced, voluntary coma.

[ReRe]

7. Absofuckinglutely!

A comatose democracy.

[abq e streeter]

9. Couldn't have said it better

and the part about way too much of the Democratic establishment, and the Obama White House being a part of all this, saddens me greatly to reluctantly agree with.I wish to hell I could dispute that part. I can't.

[cantbeserious]

4. Thank You For Sharing - This Validates A Truth Many Espouse

eom

[HiPointDem]

5. kr. jail em all & throw away the key is how i feel. who needs them, it's all rigged anyway, all

the interest rates, the loans, all of it. we *know* it is, why aren't they in jail?

[forestpath]

6. K&R

[ReRe]

8. K&R

Only thing I don't agree with is when he says "Finance is an amoral world, bordering on the immoral." Finance IS immoral. Thanks for the OP Scuba.

[L0oniX]

10. Proud banker basher here. n/t

[Duer 157099]

11. Finally, some small consolation!

They hate what they do!! Good!! I hope their hatrid fills their empty bellies and souls and drives them mad.

They are trapped by their own greed and will drown in it. Sucks to be them eh?

[mick063]

12. Very popular theme

That the financial moguls are killing us.

Some folks want justice, if for any other reason, that it may discourage more of the same.

Some folks would rather just pay fealty and hope it will go away by itself.

But in the end, they all seem to want it to go away.

[winter is coming]

13. "The problem of radical Islam is smaller and more containable than Islamophobes believe."

And yet, which problem is our government focusing on?

[JoeyT]

14. The one that isn't paying them.

If the Taliban or Al Qaeda made million dollar campaign contributions or offered fake jobs that paid friendly ex-politicians absurd amounts of money to exist you'd see their image reformed in a big fucking hurry.