When and if one treads through history, one finds that most of the financial and economic misery of the post war period arises from excesses associated with the misuse of the US dollar and the lack of sincerity in financial reforms through time that sought to make a more honest or fair world. Sure the IMF has come up with ways to mitigate excesses, but historically the pain that is felt by the small scale operator and by ordinary families, the weak, vulnerable and poor, is disproportionately high. You will experience loss yourself through theft.
Poor people bear too much of the brunt of the results of excess and abuse by large concerns, particularly banks that claim the moral high ground yet fleece the poor. The latest financial reforms in the US are a cop out to the larger issues of legalised theft, and a way to expand thievery. Read the following article on Volker's approach and see if you don't agree with me!
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/07/26/100726fa_fact_cassidy?currentPage=all
My concern is that we put people through unnecessary misery because we neglect to curtail the financial excesses of those with capital. We assume a general morality in finance that does not exist in reality. We turn a blind eye to what is essentially creative thievery. In our self created amoral society, people steal small things most of the time. Where people can keep secrets they do and they really exploit opportunities for legal theft whether they work in government or business. They do it with a warped sense of morality based on the notion that consequences are limited and it's smart to steal and deceive. The young being astute game players are increasingly adept at amoral theft. Steal a bit here, loot a bit there. It's part of the historical background.
Well then the next step is to steal by force when necessary. We are naive to think that this won't happen to our kids and to ourselves as we will experience the effect of laws that make it easier to steal and we become increasingly vulnerable to thieves. The legal systems and electronic technologies that make it easier to steal are with us and unfortunately expanding at an alarming rate.
Daily, we hear about Internet theft. Any casual conversation will lead to a discussion of who has lost what from a group on the Internet. Meet anyone and they will have experienced loss from theft.
Obviously, there is rampant thievery behind the scenes, and most worrying is when trusted people engage in it wholesale, the British MPs steal by false expenses, the villages wanting revenues do it legally by the science of the placement of speeding cameras, banks do it by the timing of the debit of interest, governments do it by keeping interest rates low so they can acquire more tax assets and finance takeovers of the private economy, firms do it by loans from banks to acquire competitors or plum operations others have spent their lives developing.
Theft has been legalised and you need to know the basic rule that it's very ok.
In fact, in the modern world if you don't steal, cheat, swindle, con, deceive, you are a mug of the highest order.
The game as it is now played has no rules except those passed by the thieves to steal legally. You might as well pass laws so that you can steal, as well.
Sent from my iPad with a grain of salt and a peppering of truth.