Banks Gone Wild By Paul Krugman New York Times

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18774.htm

“What were they smoking?” asks the cover of the current issue of Fortune magazine. Underneath the headline are photos of recently deposed Wall Street titans, captioned with the staggering sums they managed to lose.

The answer, of course, is that they were high on the usual drug — greed. And they were encouraged to make socially destructive decisions by a system of executive compensation that should have been reformed after the Enron and WorldCom scandals, but wasn’t.

In a direct sense, the carnage on Wall Street is all about the great housing slump.

This slump was both predictable and predicted. “These days,” I wrote in August 2005, “Americans make a living selling each other houses, paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a sustainable lifestyle.” It wasn’t....

John Edwards recently came out with a corporate reform plan, but it didn’t receive a lot of attention. Corporate governance still isn’t regarded as a major political issue. But it should be.

Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics at Princeton University and a regular New York Times columnist. His most recent book is The Conscience of a Liberal.

we have elevated business and corporate leaders to a status equivalent to that of monarchies -- or truly hard working and studied people.

these a people dedicated to the low road of making money -- something we all need -- but subject to human frailties of lust or greed.
it only works if these things are regulated -- people need rules to operate by. not unlike children.

directly to jail without passing go. The continued screwing over of we the people has gone far enough.