SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 2010
March 13 2010: Moral Fiber: Lehman, Toyota, Madoff, Geithner
"Farmer's son who helps make sorghum molasses from sugarcane, Racine, West Virginia"
Ilargi: Oh brother, where do I start? You've all heard about the Lehman Repo 105 case, I assume, and possibly read some of the comments on the case. But I think we need to focus our attention elsewhere, none of the commenters I read are trying to figure out who’s behind the curtain, even though they tell themselves they are. And once again, I didn’t have to look far for an example that makes my case for me. This one's about Orange County suing Toyota, and Connecticut pondering similar action (Toyota may well be gone a year from now, they'll have to pony up untold billions of dollars in damages in the American legal system):
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Friday he is investigating Toyota's response to vehicle-accelerator problems after three Camry crashes in Connecticut this week, one of which was fatal. In a letter to Toyota, Mr. Blumenthal asked whether Toyota plans to send engineers to examine the vehicles in the crashes to assess the cause."Toyota has a moral, ethical and possibly legal duty to investigate accidents that may involve faulty accelerators [..]"
When I read things like that, there’s a big red alarm going off in my head. An Attorney General who states that Toyota has a moral and ethical obligation to look into people dying from using its products, but who isn't sure it's illegal for Toyota to NOT do so.
That, for me, is the best possible way to summarize the essential problems we keep on being bombarded with left, right and center. An AG who can’t get himself to express outright that being directly responsible for people's deaths is illegal. And you know what? He may well be right. Toyota, for all we know, may be acquitted in a court of law. I wouldn't put it beyond the opaque scope of our legal systems. If I push you off the 40th floor of a building, and there's video of the act, I can be sentenced to death. A large corporation, however, can apparently make the case before a jury that you jumped, or would have jumped, or might have jumped anyway, so I’m not really responsible for you dying. If I can afford Johnnie Cochran, all bets are off. Which reminds me of the statement by a Toyota exec a while back, who said in the US Congress that his company didn't know how people "used its products". Hey, we thought they bought the Camry to sit in the driveway, who knew they'd actually hit the road?
Harry Markopolos describes how no-one involved with Bernie Madoff wanted to know the truth about him, because their very wealth and well-being depended on not knowing it. And if you look at society as a whole, the same is true for 99% of the population, be it in America, Japan or Europe. We wish to believe that we live in democratic systems that apply the rule of law equally to all citizens, because it makes us feel better about our lives. And if we don’t live in such a system, we’d rather not be told. We maintain our faith and allegiance in the face of pretty much anything reality throws at us. We're being robbed blind and refusing to see.
Lehman's CEO Dick Fuld made almost half a billion dollars off the fraud he oversaw, states Dylan Ratigan. Fuld has been walking around free, enjoying his loot, for 18 months, since Lehman collapsed. And that's not because nobody among the US market regulators knew. You know why it is? It's because they DID know. It’s because the SEC and the NY Fed under Geithner and the Treasury under Paulson and the Fed under Greenspan and Bernanke DID know, that Dick Fuld gets to spend his part of the loot. It’s because part of the loot went to all of the above, because they’re all guilty as sin. Oh wait, what does that say about Obama? That he's guilty too, or only that he's not all that savvy? And look in the mirror, what does it say about you?
Yves Smith says Tim Geithner needs to be fired for his involvement in the insane saga of the Lehman demise. Well, that's a nice first reaction, but when you dig a bit, he should maybe also have been fired for his part in the AIG scam. Or Bear Stearns for that matter, which he had the duty to oversee as head of the New York Fed. Tim Geithner will never be brought to justice precisely because Tim Geithner himself should be brought before a jury of his peers, and his peers are as guilty as he is.
Firing Geithner would be letting him off easy. He should be put on temporary leave pending an independent investigation. That's how politics works in other countries, so why not in the US? The investigation should be rapid and thorough, and led by someone who can prove they’re not associated with Wall Street in any given way. Say, Elizabeth Warren or Bill Black. And then there should be a temp replacement as Treasury Secretary, say, let's see, Elizabeth Warren or Bill Black. Or you could give either post to Harry Markopolos. Am I leaving out anyone? There's really only a few good "men", ain't there? It’s much easier to come up with a lost of names of people who should never ever be appointed to these posts than it is to name those who might.
But yeah, I know, I'm only dreaming. This present bag of Al Capones, except for a few carefully selected scapegoats (Dick Fuld: Tar and Feathers!), will never be brought to justice, because Eliott Ness wouldn't stand a chance in today's America, or London, Paris, or Tokyo. We just would like to believe he would, so much so that that very belief is actually aiding and abetting both the crimes and perpetrators. We don’t want real life, we want the hologram. We tell ourselves:"but there's nothing I can do about it", and we use that statement as an excuse to let people like Dick Fuld and Tim Geithner walk all over our children's graves.
There's times when I think that perhaps the best thing that could happen to us is for our lives and dreams to be thrown off a cliff and see what survives the landing, we can't seem to wake up in any other way. You know, the sort of thing that sounds good in theory. But I can clearly see the suffering that would come with it, and I don’t like it. Not one bit. Whatever we do, though, we must make sure of one thing. That we find back our moral fiber, and act on it.
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