Recently, and quite coincidentally, I've watched three analyses of the 2008 financial crisis. The Inside Job, a sensational documentary narrated by Matt Damon; and two dramatizations of the collapse of Lehmans: : The Last Days of Lehman Brothers (BBC) and Too Big to Fail (HBO).
The highlight of all three has to be this now famous "give it your best shot" moment with corrupt academic Glenn Hubbard:
We all know the story. Outrageous risk. No regulation. Disproportionate compensation for irresponsible risk. Arrogance, conceit and deceit, and most importantly greed.
Shocking, horrible and involving tens of millions of job losses around the world and doubling the national debt of the USA, not to mention now threatening the financial validity of several European countries. I remember sitting in a diner in Holywood when the first bailout bill fell over and the global stock market fell off a cliff within seconds. After I had got over my own shock I realised that everyone else in the diner had also stopped what they were doing, had their jaw on their chin (like me) and must have been thinking the same as I: "We're fucked!" Won't ever forget that.
I'm not aware of that many repercussions for many of the people that allowed this to happen, or engaged in it. I'm not aware that many of those involved, with the exception of those working at Lehman Brothers, even lost their jobs, let alone went to jail or had their vast ill-gotten wealth removed. At best, some were literally rewarded with massive severence payments - paid for by the bailout money provided by the tax payers. Often those same punters defrauded in the first place.
Then I read this article at The Guardian, and this arresting quote:
"When governments seek to protect the rich from the poor, they act swiftly and decisively. When they undertake to protect the poor from the rich, they fanny about for years until the moment has passed."
That kind of summed up this whole mess for me. You read the article, and - certainly in London it seems - regardless of a lack of punishment there's not even any real regulation efforts to stop it happening again! But those trying to protest for change to stop it happening again are now being included among terrorist groups as a major danger from which society should be protected.
This is like the police allowing thieves to steal from citizens, buying the loot from the thieves with the citizens' money and then preventing the citizens from even complaining about it.
Then French Finance minister, Christine Lagarde, sums it up rather well at the end of Inside Job. "The Financial Services Industry needs to remember it is a services industry...it needs to serve others before it serves itself." Furthermore, Government needs to remember to serve us and not the financial services industry because we put them in power and we pay for what they do!