A Brief History of the Greatest Financial Fraud in History
It is essential to realize and remember that this is no accident, no unhappy confluence of disparate elements that just happened to come together.
This was a deliberate and methodical attempt to overturn long standing regulations and safeguards to recreate the banking conditions that helped to create the bubble economy of the 1920's.
The purpose was to allow the inordinate increase in wealth of a few greedy individuals driven by a rapacious will to power.
They did not care what havoc they wreaked on the rest of the world in the process. We have been here before when certain personality types have been able to hijack a society. Sometimes it is financial, at other times criminal, and too often political, with even an occasional coup d'etat.
Laws exist to protect society from the actions of aberrant personalities. It does not shock us when they wield a gun. Why then does it surprise us when they utilize a pen, a glib personal patina, a reckless disregard for others, and a persistent, amoral cunning?
The strength of the professional conman is that emotions do not cloud the force of their actions because they have long since ceased to listen to their conscience. And this is their weakness because, dulled by excess, their judgement allows them to go too far. Thereby they expose their unbridled greed and undermine their schemes, which operate best behind closed doors and under cover of darkness. Transparency and the light of exposure are their enemies.
Until there is reform and a restoration of justice there will be no sustained and genuine recovery.
PBS Frontline: The Long Demise of Glass-Steagall
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