naked capitalism

attempter says:

The fact that what is good for the banksters is increasingly at odds with what is desirable for the rest of us simply highlights how predatory the industry has become, and how the incumbents are pathologically unable to see that (I may be being charitable in taking their wounded-sounding protests at face value)

One good piece of evidence for this is how they seem utterly incapable of restraining themselves even in cosmetic ways in order to try to take off a little but of the political heat.

(While it’s true they’re getting very little of this heat from governments, surely they must be at least intellectually aware of the bottom-up opposition.)

To give the most egregious example, it seems like their rushing to hand out the same old “bonuses” every chance they get is politically pound-foolish.

Of course, there’s the other possibility, that the banks know far better than governments how impossible this putative “recovery” is. Perhaps they figure there’s only a few years left of the happy time anyway, so they better loot every cent they can get right now.

t g macamhloaibh says:

How’s this for some trite old concepts. Managers of a publically traded financial institution’s main responsibility is to its shareholders and also its fiduciary responsbility to society. In the first instance, the manager’s pay reflects their ability to generate either payable dividends or long term value aggregation to the institution. The accounting rules must be transparent and open for everyone to review. In the later case, and especially in a fiat currency regime, the managers have a social responsibility to ensure their activities are prudent, risk averse and add value to society’s markets. These minimum concepts (once adhered to for decades) therefore require rules, regulations and audits to ensure compliance with market and social rules.

This isn’t rocket science or the creation of anything new.

I beginning to think that the main impediments to what seem to be almost common sensical implementation of regualtion are simply doctrinaire. Or, just possibily, the banks know there are very few investment opportunities in the West that will create high returns and have turned to gambling as means to generate huge short term profits.

DownSouth says:

The most amazing revelation in this article is that Gordon Brown has become one of the big banks’ most ardent apologists. The Tories’ reaction that it wants to eliminate the FSA is totally understandable and predictable. But the fact that the leader of the so-called “Labor” Party has also taken the side of the big banks highlights what an incredible sham the “Labor” label has become.

The same thing has occurred in the US with the Democratic party, traditionally the party of labor and the dispossessed, where Barak Obama has joined Gordon Brown as being one of the finance industry’s greatest defenders. It all goes to highlight what Robert Hughes wrote in “The Culture of Complaint” some fifteen years ago:

“In effect, the Republican and Democratic parites since 1968 have practiced two forms of conservative policy, one episodically liberal and the other aggressively not. Both are parties of upper-middle-class interests: the last genuinely progressive tax reform proposed by a President, for instance, was put forward by Jimmy Carter in 1977–and it was immediately sunk by the vote of a Democrtic Congress.”

Most fascinating are the changes in the polity that allowed this to come about. As I noted the other day, I don’t think there’s a better nuts and bolts analysis of how everyday people are systematically and intentionally eliminated from the political process in the US than in Peter Skerry’s “Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority.” Skerry’s snapshot is taken from California politcs with an emphasis on Los Angeles, but it provides an unparallelled insight into what has happened across America, and perhaps in Great Britain too.

I do not believe that meaningful economic reform is possible without political reform. This is not to say that economic problems don’t provide the impetus for political reform. But before political reform can be accomplished with economic reform in its wake, there must be an understanding of what went wrong with the American polity. Skerry’s intimate investigation of the mechanics of “elite-network” politics provides an invaluable look at what went wrong.

rootless cosmopolitan says:

Yves,

“The fact that what is good for the banksters is increasingly at odds with what is desirable for the rest of us simply highlights how predatory the industry has become, and how the incumbents are pathologically unable to see that (I may be being charitable in taking their wounded-sounding protests at face value)”

No, it doesn’t. This conflict between business interests and what is desirable for “the rest of us” is immanent to the nature of capitalism and has existed since capitalism was born in Europe in the 16th century. When ever was the purpose of any private business in capitalism to serve the interests of “the rest of us” or to serve the “common good”, whatever this is supposed to be? The primary purpose of any private business is to make money for its owners/investors, but not to make the rest of society happy. Moralistic accusation like yours that private businesses actually do what their purpose is won’t change the nature of capitalism.

rc

john bougearel says:

Yves, you are the master of understatement (I may be being being charitable taking their wounded-sounding protests at face value)

made me smile girl!