The immaculate world of financial markets

Oh the imaginary world of children! Don't you love when children deny having done something when it is plainly obvious that they did it? Facts are nothing to them, the force of their inner worlds easily and regularly spills out, allowing them to see and feel what they want, life is a perfect hybrid of the real and imagined. This is especially apparent when caught in a lie. The classic example is the child who claims innocence at having eaten her birthday cake before it was time, all the while her face is covered with evidence to the contrary. With children these contradictions, lies, strike us as amusing, good for a laugh. Yet in the business world similar deceit is much less charming, and though countless captains of finance are indeed found with icing on their faces and fingers, no amount of scolding could ever match the severity of their mistakes.

The financial world, the one that has little to do with anything other than numbers in accounts, has shown itself to be a pretend thing, pretend deals leading to pretend money. The enormous scale of this pretend world cannot be fully grasped and we are likely years from learning the true costs of these fantasy games. There are too many players to count. Last Thursday, "money manager" extraordinaire Bernard Madoff was arrested for pretending to invest billions of dollars, his prestigious and venerable reputation attracting investors ranging from foreign banks to lowly elementary schools. Where'd the money go? Who knows, "money heaven" according to one commentator. Anyway, he's simply one among the herd. These guys are a dime a dozen.

The New York Times has a series on their website they're calling "The Reckoning," which is a good guide for those brave enough to enter the fabulous fantasy worlds built by our financial leaders. There one will find a record of the gleeful parade of money managers (be warned, their titles are as numbered and varied as the ancient gods of the Hindus and Greeks) who have together foisted their imaginary world on the rest of us. The litany of the failures brought about through "sheer stupidity and cavalier, greed-fueled carelessness" with one rating agency after another racing to give "a thumbs-up to worthless paper," truly does reflect the power of the human imagination.

There is so much that is staggering about the ferocious absurdity of our financial leaders' failures that it borders on redundant to make the following point. But the offense that I personally feel (I know not why) at the great success of these thieves and charlatans forces me to type a few sentences of scorn of my own. While these men (for these people are overwhelmingly those with gonads located outside their torsos) are being uncovered as willfully driving "the economy" deep into the ground, they continue to enjoy wide acclaim and prestige as our leaders in a time of crisis, indeed they are being called on to interpret and explain the mess they have made. It's like a quack doctor who, though his treatment has shown itself plainly worthless and detrimental, is nevertheless asked to advise on how to fix the problems he caused.

Somehow this is the basic operating procedure in the financial community. They lay their turds then provide counsel as to the best method for cleaning it up. Don't believe my rhetoric? Take Robert Rubin for example. An extremely accomplished "economic advisor" and once treasury secretary under Clinton, Rubin helped plow the now infamous Citigroup into the ground; its current losses sit at a cool 65 billion with 75,000 jobs lost. Wonder of wonders, the great man continues to be a considerable voice of influence and is a keystone member of President Obama's "transition team." It must be nice to shit roses.

All this would be hilarious if it were in a novel, but given the consequences of this absurd economic fantasy are real in the extreme, with millions of people directly affected, it's also sad and a cause for anger. It may be the end of Wall Street, but it looks like those most responsible will simply put on a new suit, and weilding their jargon, acronyms and knowing (Could they be oblivious?!) condescension foist on us the fantasy that it's business as usual. How can there be accountability when the accountants and the accountable are one and the same?