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To: carranza2 who wrote (73302)	4/27/2010 3:38:49 PM
From: Maurice Winn	2 Recommendations Respond to of 74559

Having been swindled myself, in person, by share brokers in New Zealand, once for certain and another time almost certainly, I am well aware that criminals inhabit the industry and not only are they lurking, but that in the more wild west places like NZ, where there is really no punishment, they are probably the majority, making such thieving a cultural norm. It would amaze me if the likes of Goldman Sachs do not have a comparable culture. Such people develop a sense of grand entitlement. One of our daughters recently hired some lawyers. They have a similar criminally-inclined sense of entitlement, commonly becoming so overcome by it that they even forget that their trust accounts are not actually their personal piggy banks. In NZ, the legal guild is becoming a joke. The contract our daughter signed says basically that the lawyers can charge anything they feel like charging. Then they itemized a bunch of imaginary charges including payment for their incompetency which I personally witnessed. After reading the contract and considering my long experience with such things, I agreed to pay the extra $600 they dumped on top of their quote to her. Accountants are not quite as bad as the legal people as they are more like garden variety street bandits, with incompetency shrouded in less jargon and they are less malign with it. I think the legal people get told at law school: "Yes, we know you are ethical, moral people, who want to do well, but leave that aside because we are dealing with law here and the dark side of human nature will come out and you must protect your clients and you must of course be well-paid for your efforts being the God-like people that you are". After not too long, they get in the swing of it and before you know it, they are unloading the humans from the box cars by the thousand. Imagine how many lawyers and accountants along with the Masters of the Universe are inside those Goldman Sachs buildings. But I am currently employing an accountant to handle tax returns, because the government and electorate have made such absurdly complex tax rules that not only regular humans, but lawyers, accountants and judges, as well as the tax authorities, don't know or understand the rules themselves. I don't hire lawyers, preferring to do the work myself for form filling such as conveyancing. However I did hire 23rd floor lawyers to help out on some tax rules several years ago and that was a much better investment than hiring the accountants who were incompetent and advising me that we were broke because of tax laws which they didn't understand. I can sympathize with the regular humans who think a good solution would be to get the Pentagon to use some of that expensive equipment to create vacant lots where various financial institutions are currently located. I can also sympathize with those who would create some vacant lots around Washington DC. Come to think of it, Osama was trying to do just that. Maybe the Goldman Sachs case is just catching people who deserve to be in gaol, like the people who swindled me - I had bone-solid evidence, but was being transferred to live in UK the following week and didn't have time to pursue the matter. Unfortunately, the lawyers, accountants, masters of the universe, government officials and even the politicians are doing jobs that are more or less of some value to regular humans. Let's face it, we can vote for Libertarianz and make hugely dramatic changes if we want to. But most people moan about Goldman Sachs, politicians, lawyers, accountants, tax authorities, military costs, then vote for more of the same. They get what they vote for, good and hard."Take that, and that, and that ... whack, whack, biff, bash..." Mqurice