In March of this year, we wrote a short piece entitled, "Who are the Brains behind the Housing Crisis?" (March 2, 2008) We questioned how so many of our best and brightest young people on Wall Street, from the very finest universities, working for well-respected companies like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch could err so badly. Later we found evidence that at least one computer program was in part responsible for what we believed were miscalculations. In the article, "Who's Responsible for the Crash?" (October, 2008) we quoted Alan Greenspan who stated that "bad computer models" led to the current economic crisis.
This early analysis gratuitously assumed one trait of those who had a hand in our economic debacle--good faith. Our assumption was that everyone involved believed that they were doing something positive and were somehow victimized by bad luck or maybe a touch of stupidity. We were deluding ourselves. If you look back and begin to tally the now obvious "mistakes," a pattern of intent begins to emerge that doesn't take "CSI" to uncover.
Start with the mortgage brokers who hawked no down payment, no proof of solvency loans to low and middle income people who would never, ever be able to repay those mortgages. If we heard one ad for such vultures, we heard thousands, day and night. Did they know that they were putting people into homes with loans that were destined for default? How could they not? They were the ones processing the paper, the applications, and dare we say, they were the ones encouraging the fraudulent statements, at the very least, by failing to demand adequate proof of ability to pay, and at worst, by creating information they knew was fraudulent.
Continue with the investment houses that packaged this bogus paper into "equity" interests that were then sold as "collateralized securities" which were bought by funds and included in retirement plans, foundations, endowments, charitable organizations, as well as investor portfolios worldwide. Did financial institutions like Lehman, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and others, just not question the value of the assets underlying these securities, or did they know they were worthless all along, and thus were part of the scheme?
Finally, look at Bernie Madhoff and those around him. No question there. Out and out theft. Fraud of such massive proportions that we can hardly envision it, except that we can't avoid the stories that fill our newspapers and the television news every night. And does it stop with Madhoff? Who knows? And who knows how much more fake gold exists that people believe is real?
Who or what encouraged this mass misrepresentation? Look in the mirror. The culture of wealth that rose in this country over the past decade that made all of this possible was embraced by millions of ordinary Americans. We reveled in their success as if they were rock stars. It had entertainment value. We wanted it. Millions of dollars in Wall Street "bonuses." Wealth beyond anything that we can remember in our lifetimes. And not just in the United States. Arab sheiks building extravagant cities in the middle of the desert that put anything in Las Vegas to shame. Russian oligarchs, growing rich on the ruins of the old Soviet empire, and petty dictators made large and powerful by oil money produced by their otherwise poor and downtrodden nations. A culture of wealth ruled the world and cash was the dominant icon since at least 9-11.
The money god that we worshipped as a country has now proven to be false, but it was not until the temple crashed around us, taking a lot of innocent people with it, that we began to question the religion itself. Did our nation, and our government enable people like Bernie Madhoff and the gurus at Lehman, Goldman, and Merrill to do what they did? Yes we did. Did we hold them in high esteem because they were good upstanding individuals who served as role models for our children? No. It was because they created mountains of paper wealth for themselves, but also for others, and for no other reason.
As a nation we have always admired the entrepreneurs, the industrialists, the inventors who could take a creative idea and build an industry around it, enriching themselves, but also millions of working Americans as well. But this was different. This was not real wealth. This was an ethereal bubble built on imagination to be sure, but without substance and with lots of hype. If you divide a worthless asset into a thousand pieces, are all of those pieces together worth more than the single worthless asset? Are they worth anything? No, of course not. And they won't have value even if a hundred economic gurus swear that they do. It's either valuable or it's not, and if the millions of pieces of worthless paper that contributed to this gigantic economic bubble were fraudulent to begin with, selling them from an ivory tower with the blessings and encouragement of Harvard-trained financial wizards won't make them any less fraudulent. Or less worthless.
And what did all of that bring to us? An illusion of wealth to be sure, but also a flagrant violation of the respect, albeit falsely derived, of a nation. And now it has been exposed. Have we learned anything? Can we recover our direction and self-respect? Can we trust our leaders? As recently as this week, we have seen that the massive government bailouts have apparently opened new opportunities to reward the financial sector with large bonuses, this time using taxpayer cash, shedding new doubts upon our government's ability or desire to grasp the enormity of this problem or its terrible effect on the national psyche.
Maybe this will all get so bad that government will have no choice but to truly crack down on this shameless looting of the public trust and restrain the wretched excess. Perhaps the new administration, with its promise of a major course correction, will impose some much needed regulation and some new ethics and discipline on the financial sector such that it will begin to apply its considerable economic might to rebuilding our sick economy. Perhaps we will begin to worship a proper god once again.
We'll see.
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