You're telling me you guys don't wear $3000 suits? Everyone (who's anyone) in LA wears $3000 suits...
Anyway - so I maybe got a little overexercised there while in vox populi mode. (To tell you the truth, my own crash losses weren't so terrible - partly a result, I'm sure, of not getting any "real" capital freed up until it was too late to squander it.) All the same, I don't think you've addressed the main issue - that the biggest, most respected kids on Wall St. (along with a number of not so well-respected kids) have gotten caught with their hands way deep in the cookie jar, and, one way or another, and whether or not it's good policy or good law, someone's gonna spank 'em, or at least try. I'm not even sure that you and I disagree on that point, though we may disagree whether or not the spanking has been earned.
To me, ML et al egregiously violated the social contract of democratic capitalism - which I think says that the rich and powerful can keep on doing what they do best (get richer and more powerful) so long as they show some decent respect for the rest of us and the larger interest. I'll leave it to someone who actually did go to law school to explain how this might be handled by whatever courts, and whether what looks to some reasonable persons to be something a lot like fraud also amounts to statutory infractions or torts. I'll just say that I don't think the issue comes down to the regulation of free speech by businesspeople - unless, as I've suggested earlier, your position on free speech really is so radical that it also covers a con man on the phone to your auntie, or any other form of false promise or representation... not to mention a child molester in a chat room...
Whatever the direct costs to the Wall St. titans and demi-titans, I think the indirect ones are already being paid, and may continue to be paid for a long time to come.
Anyway, no need to keep on talking past each other - if we haven't figured out each other's positions by now, we probably won't ever. |
