"I no longer trust brokers, investment bankers, anyone on Wall St.,including the SEC. They are all presumptively stupid, greedy or corrupt unless shown otherwise. This is probably a wrong assessment, I know, but I bet you 1000 shares of Berkshire that this is how most Americans feel. Foreigners burned by subprime? Hah! If I lived in Norway, Sweden, China, etc., I wouldn't dream of trusting an American financial institution with a pfennig."
Yes.
In Canada, it's just as bad, if not worse. I can't speak about other countries, but in our two countries there's the appearance of general corruption, as opposed to isolated efforts to game the system.
The 'States can point with some pride to what used to be fairly effective oversight - before deregulation and a stream of ill-advised changes to the law rendered the affected agencies toothless and impotent. Canada never even achieved has-been status.
Your statement points to the likelihood that the US, just when it most needs foreign capital inflows, has done great harm to its once-justified reputation as a fair dealer.
There's always a whiff of corruption around money, but this meltdown has been the culmination of serial decay over decades.
The damage isn't just financial and economic: it's also reputational. Worse, it wasn't caused by enemies of the United States, but rather by elites within, entrusted with the country's care.
Jim |
