Goldman Sachs
I’ve gotten a couple mails today about this.
Variously, people understand, or don’t get it at all. A lot of commentary about this is of the ‘See? Wallstreet is EVAL!!!” variety.
C’mon.
if you think for a minute the business world isn’t a cutthroat competitive clusterfuck where everyne is out for #1, you’re the definition of naive. It has ever been this way, and it will ever be this way. That cutthroat competitiveness is not what Wallstreet is about, it is the very engine of humanity.
Smith complains that Sachs isn’t what it used to be, and he’s probably right. At each turn, Government intervention has made it more and more difficult for people to do business of any kind. When business is tough, when times are tough, when the climate of the financial community is more interested in how to make money despite overweening and ridiculous intervention from the nanny state trying to make it “Fair” for everyone, guess what happens? People become territorial. people become less interested in the customer and more in the bottom line. People who used to plan their living on how much they helped other people are being portrayed as monsters,a nd are acting as the monsters they are portrayed. Those who would legislate fairness have driven the fairness out of the world, piece by bloody piece.
“Integrity means nothing anymore”.
Integrity never meant anything. Deal with it. Open your eyes and stare at the stark reality of truth. When your back is against the wall, you will say “Do it to Julia” without fail. And you will sell your birthright for your chance to stay alive.
This is were we’ve come. This is where the nanny state has brought us. This is what happens when the government gets to pick winners and losers.
it’s not hard to follow the trail from Carter’s housing executive orders to Clinton/Reno prosecuting Citibank for redlining to Barney Frank to Goldman Sachs being an unpleseant place to work. All of the people involved in this- and it certainly isn’t as if the Right is blameless, the named above are just the major players- did what they “believed” was best, and the banks and businesses did the only things they could to stay alive.
“I wouldn’t ever do anything like that. That’s wrong”.
Yes, you would. Everyone always does. The only way to stop this is to get the governments hands out from where they don’t belong, and that will never happen, the ticks always latch onto the biggest dogs.
SO everyone has no morals?
I must be misunderstanding you.
There are things I will not do, business practices I will not follow.
I have been tempted, but always am able to choose the side of right, so far.
Again, perhaps I am misunderstanding.
Ever read 1984?
There is nobody who doesn’t have an edge he can be pushed over. Not One Person. Not me, not you.
As decent humans, we do our best never, ever to be in those circumstances where we have to make those decisions. Sometimes, though, forces outside our control put us into situations where we have to do things we would not ordinarily do.
This has fuckall to do with morals. it has fuckall to do with balls, either. if I had a dollar for everytime I heard someone say “I would die rather than let anythying happen to X” but that same person wouldn’t even take out the trash, or drop ten pounds, or quit drinking or smoking, etc. for the same family they’re willing ostensibly to die for…
No. This is about being pushed up against a wall. And when someone pushed YOU up against a wall, you’ll pretty well fight. And that’s all that happened here. Goldman Sachs used the only tools that were left to them to stay alive. Exactly like you would.it’s always what everyone does, always, everywhere.
Ah, now I see where you are going.
Makes more sense now.
There are so many brilliant Hayek quotes that could be used as correllaries to your commonsense observation. Instead, I’ll just suggest googleing “Friedrich Hayek – Wikiquote” to any of your readers who haven’t read the great man’s books, and hope they go out and buy a couple.
Og is right. Business was tremendously cutthroat in the 19th century. Mark Twain wrote a humorous satire on the newspaper business that I’m too lazy to dig up a link to.
As for what businesses do when times are tough, they go to government and try to set up some laws to enforce “ethics” that have the effect of preserving whatever advantage they think they have vis a vis newcomers and smaller competitors.
Butler Schaffer wrote a dry if eye-opening book on efforts by businesses in the 20’s and 30’s to do just that, called “in restraint of trade”. Everything Roosevelt and the NRA (National Recovery Administration –the blue eagle, not National Rifle Association, the Black Eagle) did in the 30’s as compulsory government programs was proposed as voluntary industry codes of conduct in the 20’s.
I recall long ago reading how the first commandment in business was, “do unto others for they would do unto you.”
This of course has to be set against the other requirement that you have to keep your promises so people will come back to do business with you.
It’s a delicate balance. That’s why the CEO’s get the big bucks (or it should be).
Early in my road warrior days, I soonly learned that people will stab you for money. In the cubicle farms of corporate, people will stab you, simply to watch you die. At the very least, the business people were more honest.
A moron calling himself ken hoop has been leaving comments here, typical of the type of moron he is. Here’s a little clue for you, Kenny baby: When you say “X happened, and then greed became God” thats a signal to people capable of actually using their brains that you are not in their midst, but on a planet of your own. the greediest moron on the planet is more valuable to the human race than a million of you.
I tend to agree with the back to the wall thing. And the businees motto I heard is do unto them before they do unto you.
All in all, MF Global is a real piece of work. Those guys are crooks of the first order. That behavior I cannot condone or excuse.
The goverment set it all in motion so it would come down and they still have all the cards.
Be prepared to beg master obama for your daily bread. That is his wet dream, and right now, he has all the cards.