Wall Street Shenanigans

I just read Everybody's Business: The Gloomsayers Should Look Up By Ben Stein. He's a modern day Renaissance Man: actor, comedian, economist, and author. (I believe his father was an economist who worked in the Nixon Administration.)

Mr. Stein does not disappoint. He points out how Wall Street CEOs make a bundle, and when they screw up, the little guy is forced to pick up the tab. The Securities and Exchange Commission is partly to blame, since, in my view, they are basically buddies of these greedy CEOs, and that is why the S.E.C. rarely punishes lawbreaking on the Street.

Our Bush Treasury Secretary, Henry M. Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, is one of their own, so we all know whose interests he cares about.

It appears that when the current mess regarding "subprime mortgages" is over, the CEOs, the big Investment Banks and Citigroup with come out with most of their profits secure, and the taxpayers will pay for the damages. In other words, when Wall Street makes a bet, if they win, they make money, if they lose, we pick up the tab. What a business!

Of course, this is all the more galling when you realize that the middle class pays a much higher percentage of its income in taxes than the greedy folks on Wall Street.

Shenanigans, indeed.