I'm a bit torn about all this. Now that I'm in the company of people who live and breathe on all things dealing with economy and Wall Street I'm beginning to "get it" as to their POV and if i listen with an open, non-liberal socialist mind, they make a huge amount of sense. I might not adopt their views but I respect their mindset and their reality. A while back I watched the infamous Cramer on TV and in that interview, although professing a social responsibility, he noted that his advice was to make people money in any situation and that he clearly and easily looked past a lot of thingsto focus on that central goal. Business is business and making money is making money.As to me being torn, I've watched the CNBC "Greed" series and I note in the NYT's piece cited above that more regulation is on the plate for lunch. I note three things, not based on anything professionally based, but simply from the materials, views and writings of others:
1. We are not out of the woods as there seem to be several shoes ready to drop if things start to go sour e.g. mutual funds are soon to be no longer protected, commercial real estate is in the pits perhaps, and the continuing banking problems with too big to fail and little banks taking on more water than they can bail.
2. The great boom years of 2004-6 were fueled by the conversion of home equity to ready cash. Talk about borrowing against the future! It wasn't the economy as much as it was low interest and a bazillion re-fi's and then of course the packaging of all that mortgage debt into AAA's. That source is gone for now and perhaps forever and some people who ran that trade should be horsewhipped.
3. The ordinary Joe who lives paycheck to paycheck and has a life that is highly regulated just doesn't schmooze up the idea that the bank bailouts and renewed regulation aren't linked. I take that position.
The banks seem to want to give back the money why? so they don't get regulated and can do their business out of the eyes of the government - i.e. business as it was before. That's the normal guy's take on all this and frankly it stinks. I think they have given up their high-ground in this matter and there should be a federal regulator sitting on the CEO's lap for a while.
This is of course my opinion and not the company's da da da. I have a year around home in the Hamptons were a lot of these guys show up for the weekend (thankfully not so much lately). Most or good normal people who have a grasp of humanity. Then there are some who are among the most awfully pompous p...ks you have ever met in your life. You can see it in the stores and supermarkets. Locals want to do them in and can't wait for them to leave.
Albeit this post is a gross generalization, there is a smattering of truth in it all. There is a certain "be damned" attitude that seems to be a way of life for some people. Some of them are the bankers who helped dig us in this hole and were the first pigs to the trough of public money. When these pigs found out that the free feed brought a feedmaster they didn't like it as much. When they went to the point of wanting it for wanting it for free and just want the trough and not the feedmaster doling it out, that's what drives me and a lot of us crazy.