The financial crisis: it ain’t over til it’s over
by digby
Mike Konczal has written the best piece I’ve read about the anniversary of the financial crisis. He correctly points out that it was much more than the crash and the colapse of Lehman and AIG, although those were massive crises. He points out that nobody’s talking about the other two crises which are even more catastrophic for average people and are still unresolved: the housing crisis and the ongoing corruption in Wall Street culture.
Every day we read about new horror stories involving foreclosure fraud and error. And the only punishment that befell the malefactors of wealth who perpetrated the greatest crimes is that they are left with a lot of time on their hands to live in luxury and count their ill-gotten gains.
Konczal writes:
The “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone” approach to what the financial industry was selling — where it would make enough money to disappear before the consequences happen — was rampant during the bubble. The toxic culture that has been exposed, and the subsequent crisis of legitimacy Wall Street faces, is a whole other crisis.
Concerns about the persistence of the “I’ll be gone” mentality is one reason why people wanted to see criminal convictions, rather than just a “perp walk” — something that could have forced real institutional change in addition to bringing justice. When we see HSBC pay a small fine for money laundering for drug cartels, or another settlement on foreclosure fraud that is quickly ignored by the big banks, we are still living through this crisis of legitimacy.
There’s a list circulating of more than 300 books (!) written on the financial crisis. One that I think stands out for its moving human quality didn’t make it. That book is “The Trouble is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street,” and it’s a project of Occupy the Boardroom and n+1. It consist of more than 150 pages of letters written to Wall Street executives from ordinary Americans on everything from the bailouts to foreclosures.
Though the letters are often angry, it’s remarkable how many of them are motivated by the basic notion of fairness. The sense of betrayal caused by Wall Street’s unwillingness to accept responsibility, much less shame, for its actions, as well as an urge to call out an institutional double standard tie together the wide range of different letter writers. They speak for most people I’ve talked to. Yet these kinds of things are notoriously difficult to change, and it remains open on whether or not that will happen.
It’s become commonplace for Wall Street executives to say that the chance of another crisis “is as close to zero” as it can be. And perhaps that is true, or will be if we tweak regulations a certain way. But remember: The crisis remains with us in every foreclosed neighborhood and ripped-off investor — and in the suspicion ordinary people have that the economy as a whole is rigged against them.
People in this country tend to believe in the concept of fairness and equality as a bedrock value (even if too many of them find far to many exception to the rule.) Those values are considered naive concepts among our elite and it’s a big part of the reason who so many of them are held in contempt by average Americans. It’s one thing to rig the game, it’s quite another to brag and laugh and then dare people to do anything about it.
.