Greed is good

Making money, lots of it, is the ultimate arbiter of not just success, but also morality - Jerome a Paris

NVDL: That statement is about to be turned on its head. I have a feeling Lehman's Mr. Fuld should go into hiding before Americans form angry lynchmobs.

clipped from www.nickvanderleek.com In today's economy, the cannibalistic sector is not oil&gas, but finance. Bankers, through debt, have the ability to convert future cash-flows into immediate profits. Such immediate returns attract more capital, talent and resources (which cannot go to other sectors) and impose an iron discipline on the rest of the economy: those that provide the debt want to ensure that the future cash-flows will indeed materialize, and move in to ensure a relentless focus, in the underlying activities, on profitability at the expense of all other criteria. The immediate contribution of the financial world to measured GDP and growth makes it a popular industry, thus reinforcing its influence - and spreading out its way of thinking, focused on monetary gains and financial "efficiency." So not only the rest of the economy gets squeezed for any extra drop of profitability, but the language of financial analysts becomes the dominant one of not only economic discourse but also political discourse;