There have been a couple of posts that really got me going the past couple of days. First one is this one that lays out the issues from the perspective of the bottom end of the socio-economic spectrum. There is an abbreviated version over at Financial Armageddon that I prefer, as sometime Zerohedge drives tack with a sledgehammer.
The other one is a touch more insidious. Jesse has always been a favorite of mine. Jesse speaks for the moneyed interests who have a feeling of responsibility and duty. I have always felt that Noblesse Oblige is a emotion only felt by the noble. I respect him highly. But Jesse is now in a bit of a snit because it looks as though people who have stored their gold and silver bars in the vaults of vipers now may lose some of their money. The horror.
For the most part, there were very few grandmother's retirement nest eggs in the list of investors at MF Global. I am certain that they kept a few on retainer so that they could appear to be serving a pubic interest, but the truth of the matter is that this was a fund set up by a predator (read here Corzine) who wanted to parlay his financial (ex-Goldman-Sachs) and political (ex US Senator, ex-New Jersey Governor) influence into an even more insufferably huge wealth pile.
The people who raced to throw money at Mr. Corzine were the financial equivalent of jackals to Mr. Corzine's wolf. When the wolf took their money, they were/are aghast at the idea that someone would use them so luridly. Jesse of course finds the idea reprehensible (which it is) but come on, in the immortal words of Sister Anna Rita (Eighth grade English) if you run with a bad crowd, you most certainly will eventually end up in trouble.
Look, the system here in the land of the free (etc., etc, etc) has been financially and morally bankrupt for a while. Jesse has been one of the best chroniclers. I think that here in blogoland, we should not concern ourselves so much with the huge losses obtained by the wealthy (leaving them still wealthy, but less satisfyingly so), but instead, chronicling and working to help the truly needy who are so starkly chronicled by Mssrs. Durden and Panzer
5 comments:
I think you are wrong on this one.
Jesse is describing straight up theft.
It is similar to the banks that foreclose on a house that has no mortgage - which has happened so far only by accident.
Russell, Mon Vieux:
I think I am bang on.Yes, it is theft. What I say is that when you park your money with a thief to get greater rewards than you would other wise, you are a fool and a thief as well.
MF Global was always dicey. Corzine was always a thief. The folks who dealt with him are trying to piggyback their way to greater wealth through access to his trackrecord of successful theft.
Fuck them
Hear, hear, fuck them with a rusty flag pole.
The amount of greed on display is mind staggering.
But the theft was not from his investors, but from people who bought gold and the like, and were holding it in his warehouse.
It is like your safety deposit box at the bank. Even if the bank goes belly up, you are still supposed to get your bottle cap collection back.
In this case it is like the bank emptied out the safety deposit boxes and used the contents as collateral.
Russell:
I really believe that my premise holds. You park any value with a thief and pays your money and takes your chances when you lose. Yes it is theft, but there is a risk cost for doing business with a known thief.
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