Originally Posted By: TooManyWheels
I am amazed at the outright gall involved in armies of PhDs in Economics and MBAs in finance blaming those pesky less educated people for collapsing the world financial system! Does that not sound surreal to anyone but me?
It sounds a lot like an automotive engineer deliberately designing an unsafe car, using his personal reputation for expertise to reassure all customers that the car is perfect for them, and then blaming them when they purchase these cars and have accidents.
You can not reasonably, simultaneously claim to be both the expert in the system (and on the system), and the victim of the other less expert elements.
I am particularly amazed by Allan Greenspan saying he never dreemed that markets would not self-regulate rationally. You create a system where the leaders are rewarded if they gamble and win, and rewarded if they gamble and fail. Where is the accountability for gambling, failing, and collapsing the system? How is this rational? In my opinion he has no moral high ground to talk about rational thinking and behavior.
I think this is the best, most accurate comment here.
It's easy to blame the uneducated "low man on the totem pole", the person who maybe doesn't understand all the intricacies of the mortgage business. All they want is a home of their own, to stop throwing their money at someone else's investment and actually own something, maybe for the first time in their lives. Now all you people can do is demonize them for being "greedy"? That's pathetic.
What about the phalanx of MBA's who created the system? The guy with the advanced degree working at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, who developed the concept of the credit derivative? You do realize that you cannot get a job at a place like Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs without an advanced college degree, don't you? Don't sit there and think for a millisecond that the guys at Countrywide and Washington Mutual were driving forklifts one day and generating billions in mortgage loans the next. Aren't these people supposed to be the smartest, best educated in the world? Where is their culpability?
As a nation we are all taught to shoot for the stars. We are taught to strive to be the best, be #1, go for the gusto, that we're all special and deserve everything we get. 300 million people, all hearing the same message. Why have millions of people emigrated to the US? Because they've heard the same message!! It's the siren song of our times.
While everyone's out trying to carve out their monster piece of the pie, where is the oversight? Where are the people who know the difference between right and wrong? Shouldn't the HyperSmart, over educated, Type A, "Oh, he's soooo driven" type be supervised and managed somehow? Why were the B-school overachievers allowed to bollock up the banking industry?
You mean to tell me you are going to sit there and blame the truck driver or the car salesman or the asst. manager of the Apple Store for the financial crisis we are in? Really? You want to lynch the shift manager at a plastic molding company instead of the MBA who knew better? REALLY?
Look, the whole thing was motivated by greed. We get it. There were people gaming the system from the top to the bottom. That's hardly an original concept. But, somewhere in the vast middle are people that were taught to know better, and they did nothing to stop this. Sure, they maxed out their bonus plan, got the wife that new Lexus hybrid, set up their kid at Duke or Florida State or wherever, upgraded the kitchen with granite countertops and that sweet Viking range. So what if a bunch of high school dropout truck driving losers get foreclosed on. That $250,000 annual bonus paid for the basement home theater system. Isn't that what really matters, anyway? The MBA's got what they wanted and if someone else has to take the fall, oh well. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!
