Recently I gave a lecture nad we had a helluva battle of words…..it seems those students studying finance believe that what is best for business id best for the country….I did not agree and a war of ideas ensued…..
I tried to point out that we have seen all this financial tap dancing before….back at the century of the 20th century they were called “robber barons”……
Robber baron is a term that revived in the 19th century in the United States as a reference to businessmen and bankers who dominated their respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of pursuing various anti-competitive or unfair business practices. The term may now be used in relation to any businessman or banker who is perceived to have used questionable business practices or scams in order to become powerful or wealthy (placing them in power of everything having controlled most business affairs.)
A pretty good definition and thought I would ask……sound familiar?
What many on Wall Street do not realize that Main Street is getting more angry with every new deal that they see coming out of Washington….they see the wealthy getting wealthier while the people struggle and fail dealing with their lives…..they (the people) see businesses that made awful decisions get money to make the same type of decisions again….while Main Street gets a foreclosure notice….Main Street sees the politicians covering Wall Streets butt while they in turn screw the people in the same region of the body.
And the financial media desperately tries to convince Main Street daily that all is well within the economy…..and in the same voice tells Main Street that there is NO consumer confidence……
All this leads one to believe that their is a new generation of Robber Barons that are manipulating the economy for their benefit and the people pay the price in their daily lioves as well as the bailouts that have done NOTHING to help Main Street.
And there is Washington…..NOTHING is being done on the scale of the bailouts of the wealthy for Main Street…..the anger persists and is growing…but will the people forget all this suffering once the economy rebounds? My guess is they will forget…..until the Robber Barons find another way to make more money, put the economy in jeopardy and gets their pound of flesh from the taxpayer……..NOTHING changes…they just re-label it and try to hide the fact that the wealthy get the gold and the people get the shaft (to resurrect an old saying).
A Robber Baron by any other name is still a thief! And Wall Street is full of thieves!
I don’t see why anyone is surprised, or why these daft ideas persist.
Yes, a healthy national and international economy is vital for the country and its citizens and, yes, without successful business you won’t have that. However, the connection is then made that whatever is good for business is good for the country and that’s a HUGE leap sideways and simply bullshit!
People will always be people and successful business people are usually that way because they have drive, ambition and an enormous amount of competitive drive, which automatically results in them doing ANYTHING to outwit the competition – you and me don’t come into the equation!
Oh well….,we were NEVER part of the equation, huh? Here in the US we are moving slower than the rest of the world in recovery…..basically, the treasury is letting the same dipsticks with terrible decisions remain in charge and are continuing the same practices that just crapped out our economic system….anyway….I like the term “robber baron”….the top hat and fancy clothes and more weomen and faster cars and ……..it seems to fit….whayt is the saying? Older scotch and younger women…works for me….lol
Oh yes… that works for me too – 😈
However, to cheer you up further, in the UK, even the government states we are STILL in recession. In the US, government figures at least show some positivity, even if it is rather fanciful.
It is just that….fanciful….the only thing that says we are pulling out of recession is the stock market and that has nothing to do with the people that actually work for their money……in other words…it is a PR stunt…nothing else….
Yeah, well… WE’RE so far into recession even the PR department doesn’t dare pretend it’s happening. Still, maybe there’s not really any difference and your lot just have more balls than our lot, or richer imaginations! 😈
I believe it would be the imagination thing……