When Bankers Rule the World - by David Korten

[BridgeTheGap]

The tell-all defection of Greg Smith, a former Goldman Sachs executive, provided an insider’s view of the moral corruption of the Wall Street banks that control of much of America’s economy and politics. Smith confirms what insightful observers have known for years: the business purpose of Wall Street bankers is to maximize their personal financial take without regard to the consequences for others.

Wall Street’s World of Illusion
Why has the public for so long tolerated Wall Street’s reckless abuses of power and accepted the resulting devastation? The answer lies in a cultural trance induced by deceptive language and misleading indicators backed by flawed economic theory and accounting sleight-of-hand. To shatter the trance we need to recognize that the deception that Wall Street promotes through its well-funded PR machine rests on three false premises.

1.We best fulfill our individual moral obligation to society by maximizing our personal financial gain.
2.Money is wealth and making money increases the wealth of the society.
3.Making money is the proper purpose of the individual enterprise and is the proper measure of prosperity and economic performance.
Wall Street aggressively promotes these fallacies as guiding moral principles. Their embrace by Wall Street insiders helps to explain how they are able to reward themselves with obscene bonuses for their successful use of deception, fraud, speculation, and usury to steal wealth they have had no part in creating and yet still believe, as Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein famously proclaimed, that they are “doing God’s work.”

Read more: http://www.utne.com/realizing-the-vision/when-bankers-rule-the-world.aspx#ixzz207t36RIy

[closeupready]

1. K&R. Sadly, not much of a surprise.

nt

[Ghost Dog]

2. True. But one does come to wonder to what extent girls and boys of the complicit PR machine,

(and I employ the term 'PR' just to be polite to the paid-for propagandists that blight what could be otherwise well-informed, open, honest, transparent discourse in this technologically-enabled, educated and potentially self-aware age of ours) involved in promoting that "cultural trance induced by deceptive language and misleading indicators backed by flawed economic theory and accounting sleight-of-hand", may be becoming a little worried as regards the liklihood they themselves, personally, will be required, one day very soon, to face the music and pay a high price for their venial lying dishonesty.

"I was only obeying orders, otherwise I would have lost my job, and my perks" was no excuse at Nüremburg and it will be no excuse when the shit hits the contemptible fan of such hacks.

Bear with me. Just trying out a little rhetorical exercise, you understand.

[closeupready]

3. I think they realize people are pissed at being lied to all those years.

You can tell in how they seem to have moderated their reports.

Just one example that comes to the top of my mind, on PBS' Nightly Business Report, they discuss the day's business developments with lots of Wall Street personalities, and when they finish a segment, they quickly ask these people if they own stock or shares in the companies about whom they are opining.

I don't think they did that in the go-go years.