Greed Is God

Taibbit, writing in the Guardian:

Now here’s the really weird thing. Confronted with the evidence of public outrage over these deals, the leaders of Goldman will often appear to be genuinely confused, scratching their heads and staring quizzically into the camera like they don’t know what you’re upset about. It’s not an act. There have been a lot of greedy financiers and banks in history, but what makes Goldman stand out is its truly bizarre cultist/religious belief in the rightness of what it does.

The point was driven home in England last year, when Goldman’s international adviser, sounding exactly like a character in Atlas Shrugged, told an audience at St Paul’s Cathedral that “The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest”. A few weeks later, Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein told the Times that he was doing “God’s work”.

Even if he stands to make a buck at it, even your average used-car salesman won’t sell some working father a car with wobbly brakes, then buy life insurance policies on that customer and his kids. But this is done almost as a matter of routine in the financial services industry, where the attitude after the inevitable pileup would be that that family was dumb for getting into the car in the first place. Caveat emptor, dude!

People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the American character. You have to live here to see it. There’s a hatred toward “moochers” and “parasites” – the Tea Party movement, which is mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being between “water-carriers” and “water-drinkers”. And regulation of any kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.

This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman’s only crime was being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad guy!) should get off Goldman’s Armani-clad back. Another side is going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of civilisation – which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It’s an important moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without limits.

Yeah, this pretty much describes one of my relatives, the one who genially explained to me that I was a “leech” for being on extended unemployment, claiming that it was people like him and his wife who “carried the weight” for non-productive types like myself. I don’t speak to him anymore. But I don’t kid myself that he’s the only person I know who thinks that way.