I had dinner last week with some pretty well-to-do, erudite, 50-70 year-olds. All of whom were well-traveled, with successful careers in finance and business. And so, conversation turned to the European Crisis concerning the Greece bailout. The gist of the whole thing was platitudes like, this or that government should have been quicker to respond or Angela Merkel should not have dragged her feet about this or that point.
And then I was like what about Wall-Street (Goldman Sachs advisory role to Greek government)? What about the US mortgage crisis and the barely averted collapse of the world financial system?
“Yeah, but those are two separate issues.”
I was like: “Not really, because most of this would not have been possible without lack US regulation, which foments an industry of fraud (lets not mince words) and in turn this industry, creates a de-regulatory race to the bottom around the world, but more importantly engenders extreme market volatility that is disruptive to responsible public and private financial planning and creates unprecedented events Nissim Taleb likes to call ‘Black Swans’.
So, A N Y W A Y S, . . . after we labored through a few more points, I argued that behind all this is, if the United States and its businesses are to be considered a substantial influence of world affairs and global trends, then an astute observer would have to trace this de-regulatory bonanza to a profoundly corrupt political system where money alone is the only currency.
And of course there is corruption around the world, including in Europe. Hell, like most things you could argue Greece invented it! But I still find that the relationships American power brokers entertain with the mirror they face in the morning simply doesn’t compare to their European equivalents. I feel the presence of a remnant, but still tenacious thin layer of minimum self-respect within the governing classes of Europe that seems largely absent in America.
This documentary, Casino Jack and the United States of Money, about Jack Abramov, looks excellent and hopefully will do a great job of illustrating those two churning wheels that are Congress and moneyed interests that fit and feed off each other.
And hopefully the documentary will resonate the words of Philip Zimbardo: “Its not about the a few ‘bad apples’, its about the barrel“. In other words its not about Chancellor Merkel holding a particular viewpoint, or the level of government coordination in response to a given crisis. Its about the system that birthed this crisis.
- Guy B.
