It's MY fault... now can everyone just get back to fucking work?

For the past few weeks, every current and former executive, board member, trader, and mascot of every current and defunct, major and minor financial institution has been paraded in front of Congress like some sort of witch or communist and questioned to death by a committee whose job it is to blame the financial crisis on someone. Because naturally, whenever something like a global financial crisis strikes, there is clearly one person to blame.

I saw something which made me laugh out loud (at the office) the other day. Greenspan was testifying before the committee and actually made the claim that he thought he was 70% right and 30% wrong during his time as Chairman. That's like one step away from saying "70% of the time, I was right all the time!" This statement makes me curious for three reasons: 1) It seems to imply that the Chairman of the Fed has 100% control over the entire globe's economy, which is clearly nowhere near the truth, 2) it implies that Greenspan has some sort of financial analysis team working to produce these seemingly bogus numbers, and 3) it also implies that rather than working on other things (like solving the economic problems we have) this world-class team of economic thinkers is sitting around trying to justify Greenspan's C- grade performance as Chairman.

The most ridiculous thing about this is... so what if they do find Greenspan responsible for the economic crisis through their arbitrary process? What are they going to do?? Execute him? Ban him from ever giving anyone advice ever again? Send him into exile? Stan O'Neil, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch who is widely blamed for driving that organization into the ground... is already happily employed again. The fact of the matter is that even if we do find someone to blame for the financial crisis, it means nothing at all. It's not like there's any punishment the government can dish out, and more importantly, finding out who caused the crisis will not solve it. Catching an arsonist doesn't put out the fire!

I think any reasonable person would conclude that greed caused the financial meltdown. There were simply too many Americans trying to live beyond their means (by taking out credit cards and mortgages they simply couldn't afford) and too many "smart" Wall Street guys thinking up new ways to make money providing these people with loans. However, that answer simply won't fly in Congress. The American people clearly are unable of ever doing anything wrong (because they're the voters, surprise, surprise), so now we've got to find some rich and mighty Wall Street type that looks just enough like a bastards that the American people might fall for it. But what do I know?

Fuck it... Can we just say I single-handedly caused the financial meltdown and get back to work on how to fix it please?

Mo out.

PS I'm still looking for a singer and a bassist in case my bank job "doesn't work out" after this post...