07.11.12
What took so long?
From the New York Times today:
The misconduct of the financial industry no longer surprises most Americans. Only about one in five has much trust in banks, according to Gallup polls, about half the level in 2007. And it’s not just banks that are frowned upon. Trust in big business overall is declining. Sixty-two percent of Americans believe corruption is widespread across corporate America. According to Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog, nearly three in four Americans believe that corruption has increased over the last three years.
We should be alarmed that corporate wrongdoing has come to be seen as such a routine occurrence. Capitalism cannot function without trust. As the Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow observed, “Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust.???
The parade of financiers accused of misdeeds, booted from the executive suite and even occasionally jailed, is undermining this essential element. Have corporations lost whatever ethical compass they once had? Or does it just look that way because we are paying more attention than we used to?
The story is not the best the Times could have done.
The truth is more complicated. In anonymous polls, and to friends at home, a majority of Americans may say they don’t trust corporate America. However, in public it’s another matter.
My frequent impression is that, no matter how poorly they have been treated by a rigged economic system, many resent being told it is that way because of moral failure in big business.
Pity the Billionaire portrays it well. When many people were the most riled up about the economic collapse, they were told a fabulist’s story on how it was big government’s fault. And that if big government hadn’t been so corrupt and tyrannical, the banks would have never had to give all those loans to people who didn’t deserve them.
Pure unfettered capitalism is the answer and the economic collapse occurred because we no longer had it.
If, indeed, Americans distrust corporate America, why is it so easy to find examples like the pugnacious-looking fellow in Mean Future, marching along with his absurd “I Love Capitalism” sign?
“It’s hard to fathom the broader social implications of corporate wrongdoing,” reads the chin-scratcher at the Times. “But its most long-lasting impact may be on Americans’ trust in the institutions that underpin the nation’s liberal market democracy.”
Even the journalist, given an opportunity to state the obvious, hedges his bets. Working and playing in Wall Street’s backyard, he has too much to lose.
“This is stewpit blah blah blah,” wrote a 61 year-old white guy before I sent him to the trash can.
The Grumpster said,
July 12, 2012 at 12:54 pm
“Capitalism cannot function without trust”. That’s a good one. Who’s the rocket scientist that dreamt that one up? Seems to me the truth is that Capitalism cannot, by its very definition, ever be trusted. Capitalism is about one thing and one thing only: money. If lying is the way to make money, then Capitalists are going to lie; it’s that simple. The only thing I’d trust a Capitalist to do is fuck me out of every last penny I have. Anyone who trusts Capitalists to do otherwise deserves the ass-raping they get.
George Smith said,
July 12, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Yeah, it certainly came off totally ridiculous.
Plus, there’s this —
The parade of financiers accused of misdeeds, booted from the executive suite and even occasionally jailed …
How many have actually been booted and jailed here? Zero?