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In Defense of Bankers

MacroAndCheese's picture




 

Bankers have been under siege lately.  I should know, I am one.  Just this week we saw a post on this site tying the suicide of a Greek man in the main Athens square to bankers, urging bankers of all stripes to resign en masse as a means of striking back.  Yesterday we read a guest post by a writer here wondering half seriously if we should execute corrupt bankers.  Commenters were evenly split on whether bankers should be simply executed, or if there was perhaps a better way to inflict even more pain.

I would find these deliberations somewhat amusing, if they weren’t so far afield of reality and so pervasive in our society.  The root of the vitriol seems to come from the perception that bankers are solely responsible for the financial crisis that started in 2007.  This view is compounded by the generalized lumping of all bankers into the same pot, just as if postal workers should also be held responsible for the ills of our government.

It takes just a quick, cursory look at the financial crisis to see what a massive joint effort it truly was, but first let’s clarify just who these guilty bankers are—who were the ones who had a direct hand in the financial crisis, and who did not.  We can presumably blame upper management.  We could point a finger at the guys who packaged and sold those securitized CLOs, CDOs, etc.  We should probably add the people who arranged the mortgages that went into those products.

Those are all bankers, for sure.  But we can’t very well blame bank tellers, can we?  We also can’t really blame stock or bond traders, or traditional loan officers, or credit officers (apart from the ones associated with the bad asset packaging), or the commercial real estate teams, or the bank administrative arms, or the notary people, or the IT departments, or collections, or the bank asset managers who didn’t buy the toxic products.  It would be a stretch to finger the people issuing bankers’ acceptances or letters of credit, or all the folks who service credit cards.

So I’ll go out on a limb here and pencil in a figure of 5% as the number of bankers that were directly involved some way in the financial crisis.  I realize it probably seems high to you too, but let’s be conservative and go with that.  Let’s call these people the “Bad Bankers.”  (For disclosure, I am not a Bad Banker.)

Now let’s take a spin around the financial block and see who else was involved in the crisis.  Let’s start with the investors who bought the products from the Bad Bankers.  Investors who bought these CDOs and CLOs are certainly fully complicit, because banks would hardly waste their time creating investments that no one would buy.  So we really have to include pension funds, endowments, mutual funds, 401k plans, hedge funds, etc.

But these guilty investors are among the most conservative institutions, and they certainly would not have made their purchases if the investments had not been highly rated.  That trail leads to the ratings agencies, most notably Moodys, Standard and Poors, and Fitch.  In fact many institutions can or will only buy AAA-rated investments, that is, only bonds deemed to be of the highest possible credit, virtually certain to return principal and interest.  So the ratings agencies are certainly to blame as well.  How in the world could something with a AAA rating be worth pennies on the dollar just a few months later?

At the same time, regardless of the rating, the products themselves were bad.  Had the mortgages been performing, we would not be in this mess in the first place.  The problem is that the investments that the rating agencies endorsed consisted of mortgages with no down payment, borrowers with poor credit ratings, faulty documentation, etc.  We can’t blame the ratings agencies for the fact that the products were so bad, and we really can’t blame the Bad Bankers, because they would not have agreed to lend money to the borrowers under those conditions.  The Bad Bankers were just representing a huge lender.

The stars of the show, the lenders that made it all possible, are none other than FNMA and FHLMC:  Fannie and Freddie.  These are the government agencies that set the standards and leant the money to the subprime and “Alt A” borrowers, that stretched farther and farther to find potential borrowers so that more and more Americans could own their own homes, no matter how inappropriate that might have been.  No Fannie and Freddie, no financial crisis.  It’s that simple.  Our list of the guilty is growing exponentially.

But Fannie and Freddie are really only there to serve their master, the federal government.  As we all know, our government has been pushing home ownership during multiple administrations, pushing the ratio from an already unsustainable 64% to a mind-boggling 68% over the last few years that preceded the crisis.  Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, encouraged Fannie and Freddie to leverage their activities even more, during the height of the fiasco.  For the record, he is still the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

But the government, as ill-advised and well-intentioned as it was, could not have forced us to buy the homes that Fannie and Freddie would fund, that the ratings agencies would endorse, that the Bad Bankers would package, that the institutions would buy.  For that, they needed millions of US citizens.  Yes, it may be hard to turn down a house we can’t afford when someone is willing to lend money at low rates (we have Alan Greenspan to thank for the low rates, by the way), but why should we choose to live beyond our means?  Whose fault would that be?  Now our very long list of the guilty just became much, much, much longer.

The simple fact is that our entire country went through a bubble, just like the Japanese before us, and the Europeans now.  Among other things, bubbles require a pervasive herd mentality, and lots and lots of credit.  Our bubble was not perpetuated by the Bad Bankers, who were also living the bubble dream.  The Bad Bankers bought plenty of their own products, entranced by the same AAA ratings that ensnared the rest of us.

Sure, we can blame bankers, good and bad alike.  We can also blame our pen for staining our shirt pocket, and cut off our nose to spite our face.  In that same way, the government has been all too happy to blame the banks for the crisis, to avoid taking responsibility for its own prominent role in the debacle.  But when we blame bankers, we fail to address the issues we still face in a responsible, effective manner.  The Bad Bankers are gone, or neutered.  The rest of the chain that comprised the crisis remains very badly flawed, and we continue to single out the banks at our own peril.

 

macroandcheese.org

 

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Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:44 | 2341820 williambanzai7
williambanzai7's picture

First thing we do is kill all the bank tellers....if we can find one

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:55 | 2341858 williambanzai7
williambanzai7's picture

Here's one...
CAN I MACE YOU?

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:50 | 2341842 Ghordius
Ghordius's picture

don't smash the ATMs! they are the only financial innovation of the last forty years I'd like to keep...

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:29 | 2341771 engineertheeconomy
engineertheeconomy's picture

IF YOU ARE A BANKER THEN YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY COMMIT SUICIDE

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:13 | 2341708 tony bonn
tony bonn's picture

"..we can’t very well blame bank tellers,..."

although parts of your argument are not unreasonable, this statement is totally fucktarded....do you honestly think that anyone would classify a bank teller or the it department as a banker?....no, dumbass, most folks would not...this is why i prefer the term bankster to identify that small cabal of financial terrorists, some of whom come from banking, who inflicted mass devastation on the world through fraudulent banking products, massive bailouts (zirp), and crooked loan practices (ninja, anyone?)....

hank paulson and ben bernanke are the capos of this organized crime syndicate, with many uncredited players from the bush crime syndicate...

and yes, the robosigners per se were not bankers - empty suits they were - but the instigators and perpetrators were banksters - even low level ones and their crooked lawyers....

your rhetorical effort was negligible. go fuck yourself before you decide to write on this subject again....

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:13 | 2341704 Seize Mars
Seize Mars's picture

Is this article a joke? I swaer to God this is like an Onion article.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:10 | 2341690 jc125d
jc125d's picture

We can blame the dog for shitting on the rug, or we can blame ourselves for getting him out of the pound, letting him in the house, and feeding him. You can blame the guy for nailing your drunken daughter in the dorm, pr you can blame yourself for sending her poorly prepared for the $30k/year debauch seminar on life experience. Banker, you are just a little less stupid than the customer, and just a little more dishonest. Quit pointing fingers, and let's start thinking about how to get unscrewed.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:50 | 2341596 skipjack
skipjack's picture

Is a banker apologist actually posting on ZH ?

 

All I can say, cheesy, is go talk to Bill Black. He'll set your sorry deluded ass straight.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 13:01 | 2342096 waterhorse
waterhorse's picture

I thought banksters were sociopaths and psychopaths and didn't have a conscience or a care as to what others thought of them - wonder why they are now (badly) defending themselves?  It was an entertaining and amusing read, though it did induce nausea and vomiting.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 14:54 | 2342464 TheFourthStooge-ing
TheFourthStooge-ing's picture

waterhorse said:

It was an entertaining and amusing read, though it did induce nausea and vomiting.

Think of it as digitized syrup of ipecac.

 

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:47 | 2341583 SeekingNuNormal
SeekingNuNormal's picture

Wait.....April Fools Day was a couple of weeks ago.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:41 | 2341564 crawldaddy
crawldaddy's picture

what I fond amusing, is that usually after a crisis and disaster, usually the idiot public is lead to believe and blame the wrong people for the disaster. This time THIS TIME we finally got it right. You fucking BANKERS are THE PROBLEM.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:42 | 2341563 crawldaddy
crawldaddy's picture

what I fond amusing, is that usually after a crisis and disaster, usually the idiot public is lead to believe and blame the wrong people for the disaster. This time THIS TIME we finally got it right. You fucking BANKERS are THE PROBLEM.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:30 | 2341518 e-recep
e-recep's picture

go sell your crap elsewhere, asshole. i will listen to you when bankers will pay for their OWN losses and the the big banks and financial instituitions can go bankrupt LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.

 

until then, you can go fuck yourself.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:26 | 2341499 RoadKill
RoadKill's picture

Who to blame

Realtors & Appraisers
Mortgage Originators & Bundlers
Ratings Agencies
Fannie & freddie and the Pols that backed them and pushed the subprime nirvanna
Issuers of CDS on these products
Bank Risk Officers
Tertiary players involved in flipping this stuff
BORROWERS who lied to get a loan, didnt read the dicuments and understand the risks or ignored them to flip the house.

Most of these ARE NOT BANKERS

I think of bankers as Corporate Finance (loans and stock issuance) Sales & Trading (analysts, traders and interface with investors), Prop Desks and internal fund managers (run MFs, HFs, MM, PE) traditional deposit and lender bankers, IT etc...

And BTW its a stretch to take stupidity on behalf of anyone and translate it into Vampire Squid, Illuminati, Trilatteral Commission, World Domination BS. Thats what bothers me most. These people were greedy and stupid (lenders, borrowers and agents). They were not and are not smart enough to be plotting behind the scenes to take over the world.

The penalty for stupidy is loosing $$. And anyone that thinks bankers didnt loose money needs to talk to a Lehman or Bear employee that had 2 decades of stock based comp in company stock.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:44 | 2341773 Widowmaker
Widowmaker's picture

Who NOT to blame:  Widowmaker.

Lehman is the worst example you could use, and guess what... they knew they were peddling shit. 

Not one of them didn't, and anyone - ANYONE - who wore a suit and claims otherwise is lying out their incorporated scapegoating baby-robbing ass.

Lehman flushed the terds - culpability and accountability -- THE CRIMINAL BAILOUT / EXIT STRATEGY.  They are not innocent by any stretch of your polluted dillusional imagination.  They failed so that systemic problems remain opaque and under banker-containment -- precisely so the system cannot reform except through the banks (mutual destruction leverage is here).

Every fuck fired still owes the taxpayer money!

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:28 | 2341509 RoadKill
RoadKill's picture

Ohh I forgot. The Pols and Central Bankers that are using massive deficits and QE to try and solve the problem.

Them you can hang!

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:26 | 2341485 Zero Govt
Zero Govt's picture

Dear Mr Moron & Cheese

your list of bad bankers is faaaaaaaar from complete

how about Risk Officers? ...how did the bank write deravitives 1,000x the capital on their balance sheet??????

and what about all those 'safety nets' (crones) enjoying free lunches (careers) purportedly 'protecting the system'... the auditors taking massive fees, all the turkeys on the Non-Executive Board, the Regulators, yet more regulators (we have dozens in the alphabet soup), the Credit Rating Agents etc etc

and all during your piss-poor excuse of an article you fail to mention not one greedy global fraud has gone to jail or even been interviewed and cuffed

take a long walk off a short pier you sorry excuse for a weasel

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:15 | 2341453 Bahamas
Bahamas's picture

If a bank teller is 100 bucks short in his teller he is required to refund the money right away.

If the bank he works for is 1 billion short the same evening nobody in the bank pays, and the loss is transfered to the taxpayer....so , the fault is certainly the teller's (sarc).

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:13 | 2341439 Stuck on Zero
Stuck on Zero's picture

It's the ratings agencies.  It's the bankers.  It's the hedge funds. It's the ...  It's the rotten system.  Hang em all.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:09 | 2341427 SwingForce
SwingForce's picture

Well, then why are The Banks the only ones getting BAILOUTS????

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:17 | 2341420 Dingleberry
Dingleberry's picture

sarcasm on

He's got a point.....I mean, there were even good nazi's...right???

sarcasm off.

BTW, how many poor, naive little innocent low-level bankers heard of "liars loans" before the meltdown? I'll lowball my guess to 99.999%.

How many spoke up instead of making money off them?.......(crickets chirping....)

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 15:03 | 2341783 Widowmaker
Widowmaker's picture

In other words, epically failed their fuduciary responsibilities -- to themselves, their employer, their community and the market itself.

Yeah, "God's workers."

Nice try, Lloyd.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:59 | 2341383 WoodMizer
WoodMizer's picture

Politicians, lobbists, lawyers, traders and bankers are all on my shortlist ,of people, I will not employ or aid if the SHTF.  You may not be directly responsible for all the world's problems, but being complicit is just as bad IMHO.

You may not have birthed the cows, but you have milked them for all their worth.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:54 | 2341372 cfosnock
cfosnock's picture

So 5% of the bankers are to blame, but they those same 5% got 100% of the bailout funds.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:31 | 2341520 Zero Govt
Zero Govt's picture

i agree not all bankers are a bunch of scum-sucking frauds peddling AAA rated garbage

amongst the 8,000 banks in the US it's the Big Bad Bankers that were 50% of the sector and post-bailouts are now 70% of the sector that are the problem ...and it's growing, not getting better

we all know who the f'n crooks are, they bankroll Washington to stay above the Law and Regulators while the rob everyone in society ..it's called anarchy

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:32 | 2341298 pods
pods's picture

If you are part of the Federal Reserve System you are not a good banker.

The system was designed to allow for the government to spend more than it takes in taxes, and arbitraging on the inflation skim (pay back debt with devalued dollars).

Bankers profit by creating credit and charging interest on that credit.

Products that used to be able to be purchased through savings are finnancialized and thus put out of reach of most, forcing them into the credit system.

Sorry, not really seeing the "good" part of this.

"If you are looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror."

V

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:27 | 2341291 marathonman
marathonman's picture

So maybe the bankers aren't so bad.  They just have a monopoly on counterfeiting the money of the land through fractional reserve lending so that bank profits are effectively due to devaluation of the currency.  And since the practice is so shady and shaky that it has to be bailed out by Central Banks further eroding the value of the currency when a counterparty inevitably can't pay the exponentially expanding debt that the system creates.  Yeah.  Yeah, maybe bankers aren't so bad.....

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:17 | 2341265 slickrock
slickrock's picture

"The Bad Bankers are gone, or neutered.  The rest of the chain that comprised the crisis remains very badly flawed, and we continue to single out the banks at our own peril."

Really?  They have been coddled, reinforced and enabled to perpetrate the same crime again.  Pull your head out of the sand, the TBTFs need to be cut off from their free money supply and allowed to die.  Reenact Glass-Steagall and enforce Mark to Market.  The US needs to follow Iceland's example for how to treat bankers.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:29 | 2341251 Capitalist10
Capitalist10's picture

 This is a decent article, but it has (at least) one factual error and one glaring omission.

The factual error is that Barney Frank is not "still the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee" (ranking minority member, perhaps).

 

The glaring omission is that the writer fails to even mention the "too big to fail" problem.  Banks and the other players mentioned here behave a lot more responsibly when they fully expect to suffer the consequences of their screwups, rather than being bailed out.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:07 | 2341241 Boxed Merlot
Boxed Merlot's picture

Control fraud is criminal.  Whether it's induced by governement sanction is something the courts are to decide.

Unfortunately the courts are run by the same people that sanctioned the control fraud on their way up to their judicial appointments.

These people have replaced guardianship of law with being a law to themselves.  The definition of treason.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:03 | 2341230 Vince Clortho
Vince Clortho's picture

To summarize, "The Bankers take all the profits, but the blame is shared with the muppets."

Take your "we are all to blame" rationalization and stuff it.

 

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 11:17 | 2341720 EvlTheCat
EvlTheCat's picture

+1000

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:02 | 2341224 I am a Man I am...
I am a Man I am Forty's picture

Bankers are pathological liars.  Take any wall street CEO and they've lied hundreds of time on TV, on conference calls, in emails, you name it.  The banking system is set up to require them to lie when things go bad to avoid a run on a bank.  If 5% of the bankers can take down a world economy, don't you see a problem with this?  Your industry is corrupt to the core, you pay off politicians through lobbying to get taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy and being broken apart.  You are thieves, snake oil salesman, and will do absolutely anything for a buck.  Thousands should be in prison.  If it's only 5% it's the 5% in control at the very top making the largest bets.  It's amazing a sociopath like yourself is a scapegoating apologist for crooks.  The banks controlled the entire process, they had the money, they loaned the money, they are the professional money men, not bought off politicians or some 25 year old idiot that were told they could name what they made in order to get a bunch of money.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:40 | 2341325 I am a Man I am...
Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:01 | 2341216 Widowmaker
Widowmaker's picture

Macro and Sleeze suffers from mass dillusion.  His point is trying to justify bad behavior by attributing worse, and "its okay because everyone is doing it."  Let me summarize it for the faggots in pinstripes (from IT to loan servicing):

THE BAD APPLE SPOILS THE BARREL.

Get a fucking clue, and quit making excuses and trying to deflect blame when fraud is systemic, and the roots are bankers and their fraud-derivatives of banking thereof.

Perhaps you could grow a real spine and actually look at the shit under the rug like Bill Black.  That would require culpability, which is exactly what Macro and Bullshit is trying to dodge.

Not one fucking faggot-banker said "stop."  Everyone from the "MBA's" (HA!) to IT was complacent. It matters not who you are or how important your position is when you see destruction and don't say "stop."   

For clueless and cheese, this investor never committed fraud, or lied about income, so why am I to pick up the tab?   How can you possibly author anything like you did when the first paid out of the taxpayer treassury with TARP were record bonuses.   

What a crock of spineless denial and shit.

 

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 22:38 | 2343181 Lucius Corneliu...
Lucius Cornelius Sulla's picture

Where does one go to "blow their whistle"?  The SEC?  The FED?  HUD?  The FHA?  hahaha

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:17 | 2341262 Toolshed
Toolshed's picture

This article is the most pathetic load of crap I have read in some time. Was it ghost written by MDB? If so.......fucking brilliant! However, I doubt it was. I agree fully with Widowmaker, but would like to add: I have NEVER heard anyone cast blame on lower level bank functionaries like tellers and loan officers. These bank employees are low paid stooges, you know, like the rest of us 99%'ers. Let's execute the Dimons, the Blankfeins, the Buffets. They are manipulating the system to screw us out of our hard earned money and leaving a trail of pain and destruction on millions of lives in their wake. I vote for reducing the federal debt by televising their executions on pay-per-view. The viewers of the sold out live events could even call in their votes for the method of death like on American Idol. I like drawing and quartering a lot. Or perhaps being slowly lowered into boiling oil. Unarmed combat with hungry lions could be fun to watch also, but perhaps too brief with these pasty wussy bankers. Bread and circuses Bithez!!!!

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:30 | 2341301 TrulyStupid
TrulyStupid's picture

hard earned money?

That's a problem all unto itself. The banksters and 99percenters were fine as long as both sides were profiting from the international USD scam.

Wage earners with large homes, motorhomes, cottages at the lake, long vacations and huge caloric intakes are a tip-off to the extent of the corruption of the Imperial monetary system.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:07 | 2341240 gookempucky
gookempucky's picture

best post of the thread

 

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 08:55 | 2341207 been there done that
been there done that's picture

re: "We also can’t really blame stock or bond traders"

I don't blame them, but what bothers me is that their whole industry is FAKE and SUBSIDIZED through our taxes or through inflation/money creation at the FED. How long would the stock market be up if it were not for the FED.  Maybe there are just too many people working in a fake industry. It's like fake tits. Fake news, fake earnings, fake reasons the MKT goes up/down.... they always show a picture of these traders with every news story watching the big board. What a bunch of shit. Let this shit fail, find it's own real level and the rest can sell shoes like Al Bundy.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 08:48 | 2341191 thebigmozey
thebigmozey's picture

  Give me a break - next thing you know you'll be telling us that the government is only patrially bad.

  Guilt by association - if I worked for the Mob, could you blame me for the killings they do while I look away?

  What a bunch of clap trap - since I need to make a living, don't blame me for who I work for?

  Bankers (all of them) ought to be tarred and feathered, and dragged through the main streets of all American towns.

  JMHO

  Cheers,

  The Big Mozey

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 08:47 | 2341189 DeficitAlchemist
DeficitAlchemist's picture

Apart from being central to the toxic worthless product creation, duping lessor minds with them (idiot pension fund managers, weak rating agencies..etc..) the buying off of bent politicians with huge Lobbyist money, and being the primary beneficiaries of subsequent bailouts, who is more central to the entire TBTF saga?

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 08:48 | 2341186 Peter Pan
Peter Pan's picture

OK OK OK, I will accept the hanging of 5% of bankers as a down payment on achieving some justice.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 09:45 | 2341342 failure to perform
failure to perform's picture

Hanging is too good and easy for them. We need to strip them of everything they have stolen, tatoo(brand) and let them work at Wal-mart for the rest of their days. I personally would love to see them scavenging for food in the streets. And they get no freebie "services". I'd love to see this one play out!

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 14:42 | 2342432 TheFourthStooge-ing
TheFourthStooge-ing's picture

failure to perform suggested:

We need to strip them of everything they have stolen, tatoo(brand) and let them work at Wal-mart for the rest of their days.

Not only them, but their entire families for the next three generations. The lineage of inherited ill-gotten gains must be snuffed out. If you worked for your wealth, leave it to your kids. If your wealth came from skimming every piece of paper that you pimped, then it should be ... aaaaaaand it's gone. It's all gone.

 

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 12:57 | 2342085 waterhorse
waterhorse's picture

The banksters want to bring back the workhouses for the poor.  How about a workhouse for the banksters?  Chain gang heavy labor in striped jumpsuits, Sheriff Joe style.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 08:46 | 2341184 DeficitAlchemist
DeficitAlchemist's picture

Apart from being central to the toxic worthless product creation, duping lessor minds with them (idiot pension fund managers, weak rating agencies..etc..) the buying off of bent politicians with huge Lobbyist money, and being the primary beneficiaries of subsequent bailouts, who is more central to the entire TBTF saga?

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 08:45 | 2341179 Dollar Bill Hiccup
Dollar Bill Hiccup's picture

I think the main take away is: bad bankers could not go it alone.  The family that bought a house that was too expensive, that took out a second private equity loan, that then defaulted, that is still living in the same house that has not been foreclosed, is certainly not a victim in the pure sense of sainthood or martyrdom. That family is complicit. Some were complicit through shear ignorance, some were complicit by ignorance, greed and the manipulative force of the Salesmen who sold them their "dream" and then sold them down the river. Nothing new here folks. The bad bankers include the Federal Reserve and its failure of regulation, the creation of moral hazard through monetary policy puts on asset prices, thereby inflating asset prices and destroying price discovery, the Corporations offshoring and playing the labor arbitrage game through slaves in China (migrant workers who have few rights, dominated by the commu-capitalist system), and elsewhere, the builders enabled by the bankers enabled by government (and quasi government) policies, employing illegal immigrants by the millions because they work cheaper, for cash and live in fear, the citizens who are swathed in entitlement programs, just to keep them molified as jobs are offshored or onshored, and have figured out it is easier to not work than work, etc. ad nauseum.

Scapegoating "bankers" is a form of demonization which is just as bad as State sponsored paternalism.  Banks are a necessary part of capital formation, taking deposits as deferred consumption and making that stored value available to society at large. Banks with trillions of dollars of OTC derivatives commanding near monopolisitic hegemonies are of questionable value in my mind, but you still have to look at credit creation as an augmentation of the banking system, a necessary one. Bankers walking away scot free after losing billions of dollars due to bad judgement, greed and the absence of risk management, universities which teach economics as the new theology, mystified by mathematical symbolism yet wrapped in ignorance, are also to blame.

We don't have enought trees to hang them all, though some admittedly should be swinging in the breeze. Not all. Leave the purges to the communist party.

Fri, 04/13/2012 - 10:46 | 2341579 Kayman
Kayman's picture

"We don't have enought trees to hang them all",

Beg ta differ, beg ta differ. And, yes, Kraft Dinner, tellers get a pass.

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