The U.S.'s Financial Reform bill is over 2,000 pages. It includes exemptions and lots of opportunities to create loopholes. Behavior that caused our ongoing global financial crisis is guaranteed to continue, if we don't have swift and effective deterrents.
Broadcaster Max Keiser interviewed Luc Saucier, a Parisian lawyer to the financial community and Fulbright Scholar, on how to create a fast remedy to amoral behavior in the global financial markets.
Saucier asserts that if you are making money on Wall Street--or at a hedge fund--there is no law, except the unwritten law: Don't get caught.
Financial institutions used extensive legal resources to "technically" comply with the law. (In many cases, laws were broken, but this interview is not addressing those cases of illegal conduct.)
Saucier explains that labeling a financial institution "obscene" is an effective social deterrent. U.S. citizens have the right to own property and to make money. We also enjoy freedom of speech, up to a point. The Supreme Court stated that when "art" becomes obscene--and the court worked hard to define what is meant by "obscene"--it is no longer considered art and does not enjoy the protection of freedom of speech.
The most highly compensated players in finance are hedge fund managers earning $1 billion to $4 billion per year. Saucier says that when you see someone making money--billions of dollars a year in bonuses by exploiting the subprime crisis--then one can take the view that part of the remuneration is obscene. The same can be said for many bank CEOs, who may earn somewhat less economic compensation, but enjoy countless valuable perks.
Banks enjoy taxpayer-funded benefits including tens of billions of bailouts and ongoing funding subsidies. For example, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley receive taxpayer subsidized funding by virtue of their new post-crisis ability to borrow from the Fed. Taxpayers may decide that just as we don't wish to fund obscenity posing as "art," we don't wish to subsidize "finance" that is simply obscenity.
Mr. Saucier puts it this way:
"They are committing acts of obscenity...They are morally bankrupting society...It's obscene like kiddie porn is obscene...On the financial front that's what [corrupt financiers are] guilty of."
Financial firms pay a lot to circumvent laws, and they are more aggressive and faster than our ability to legislate.
Max Keiser notes that if a firm is branded with an obscenity label, it would be a moral deterrent:
"In the arts, if you are labeled as obscene, your access to prime time major network is cut... It could be a huge deterrent, because then the obscenity risk...would have to be discounted in the share price. Goldman Sachs's was up to $200 and is down to $130 because of the [unstated] obscenity risk."
The discussion begins at 13:00 on this July 6, 2010 edition of The Keiser Report:
Janet Tavakoli's book on the causes of the global financial meltdown and how to fix it is Dear Mr. Buffett: What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles from Wall Street.
Secondly is the issue of "limited liability". Only a corporate lawyer could have sold that bill of goods to the hapless electorate.
These two issues are probably the ONLY issues our polarized society could agree on, in sufficient numbers, to pass ratification. We could argue ALL the other distractions in Congress after that and the consensus would be representative of the public sentiment. As it is, the only representation we have is corporate representation. And it's not working for any of us mere mortals.
The system is broken and it is up to the people to get mad. To take what money they have back. Get out and stop being so complacent. Everyone "feels" something is wrong most just can't put their finger on what it is, there is a reason for that. It is because there is so very much wrong and it has been going on for so very long that it all seems normal, it isn't. Your feeling is right these people are obscene, they are grotesque, they are an abomination to freedom and commerce, and democracy.
Hey I wasted most of my life thinking there was nothing I could do to make a difference so I let myself be bought in this guerrilla "war" they wage for power and money. I am so sorry and I apologize for my lack of vigilance we all need to apologize to ourselves, our children and those who have fought and died for this nation for we may have allowed freedom to slip from our grasp without a whimper.
We are a plutocracy, a nation ultimately ruled by money.
Some news papers in Oklahoma and a few other states in that area were editorializing against that highway from Mexico to Canada (which was not well known to the public) so they bought 40 news papers. Now they can tell the people what to think through their trusted media and they will. This same strategy was used at the turn of this century by big business and it is still in used today. Buy the media and it will always support your position.
I know I am a little incoherent, but there is so much that is wrong because it has been headed in the wrong direction for so very very long.
Goldman is not obscene, our economic system is.
Like all corporations, Goldman doesn't really exist. Sorry SCOTUS, it's not a person.
It is just a front for rich investors, which shields them from liability.
They pass laws that make their machinations legal so we the people when we are wronged have no recourse, our political arena is so beholden to these big corporate entities that after they robbed the world and sent us all into this distressing financial mess our politicians gave them trillions. Yes there is a problem we the people have been complacent.
The internet is spreading the word and you can mark my words they are trying to figure out right this minute how to neutralize this venue and use it to disseminate just what they want us to know.
When someone works their butt off, hires people, builds a business and gets rich, that's "free market".
Karl Marx coined the word "capitalist" to describe someone who benefits from capital, not labor. From having, not doing. So capitalism is the end of your story: the capitalists are the rich who come in and buy up the company, then receive the benefit of it. The true capitalists are trust-fund kids, Paris Hilton and the like.
An entrepreneur is not a capitalist; an investor is.
Capitalism does not apply to businesses that need little capital to start. For example, a computer software or web company: it takes very little money to start one, computers are cheap. That's free enterprise, not capitalism. Starting a car company, or even an auto dealership, takes capital.
If you pocket money which you have not earned by providing benefits to society, are you not a thief on the felonious scale of your unworthy remuneration?
How can anybody's labor be worth many thousands of tiimes what an honest farm worker earns?
Unless we the people get to doing something we are an endangered species, freedom is endangered, choice is already being strangled. We are so divided by a media that has been literally bought that we as a people have fallen into the old situation of the Mushroom "Keep in the dark and fed manure".
Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan are the Kiddie-Porn of the Banking Industry.
Watch the Repubs and the Conserva-Dems squirm in their seats when the Public realizes their Campaign Benefactors are Pornographers.
Your insights are always spot on. Keep writing!
and the one percent have 95% of the wealth.
and the one percent control gov even the supreme court soon to be lower courts.
they can even have it so corp's are called persons.
here is the best part they can even have it so money is considered free speech.
and you think the capitalists are not ten times smarter then the masses.
think again.
bet you are a capitalist to the core.
paradigm paralysis even while a economic system is causing a nation self destruction they want more of it not less.
the capitalists are smiling all the way to their banks to big to fail while america's love affair continues.
michael moore they did not get it with your latest movie on capitalism.
they did not get it with your movie on GM.
they did not get it with your wars for profits movie.
they did not get it with your guns movie.
you were right every time and they call you ignorant.
who is really ignorant. yes who.
americans are h... bent on self destruction.