Wall Street's Sick Psychology of Entitlement

Welcome to serfdom! The elites get what the want without recourse and the masses get to sit on their hands. We are about to confirm a tax cheat as the head of the IRS. This is not surprising. Who is going to bring charges against these guys and put them in jail. our government? Are you kidding? They're encouraging this activity. An SEC employee finds impropriety with the head of a Wall Street bank (Mack), flags it, and promptly gets fired. This is the reward for honesty. I think I'll go out and buy a house I can't afford, a car I can't afford, and take vacations I can't afford....then stick my hound out for my government check!

It's their minds that have been effected......

Every time there is a problem, the gov't thinks throwing money at it will solve it. That is not how capitalism works. Sink or swim time baby. Also I have been hearing that First Merit initially refused the bailout money, but was told if they didn't take it someone else would, and First Merit would be bought out by whichever bank did. So First Merit is being forced to take the loan, pay back at 8% AND sell the federal gov't shares in the company. Making this socialism. Does anyone know if this is true or not?

Sorry for the spelling. the - they, hound, hand...etc...

Congress, the President, the state legislatures, and the state governors can still direct the appropriate agencies to declare the "zombie banks" and other "zombie financial firms" officially insolvent, force those institutions irrevocably into receivership (or whatever similar thing can be done to firms that don't answer to the FDIC), force the write-downs and fire sales to make the "troubled assets" stop stinking, and restart the financial system. This won't stimulate the economy (that still needs to happen), but it will plug the worst leaks in the system. (Thank you, Paul Kedrosky, for that excellent term "zombie banks;" you were talking about functionally insolvent small and regional banks, but I think even several U.S. money-center banks are zombies.)

Just read this article - 'The economy gets top billing, but Congress may also try to revamp 401(k) and IRA plans.' - America, be very weary of any attempt by the government to force you to have your own retirement account. It is just another scheme to force you to invest money into the corrupt system. Do not put money into any account that penalizes you if you take it out. Present 401k, 403b and many other accounts will penalize you 10% of your money if you liquidate to cash. So you will be trapped as you watch you investments sucked away by the same entities that will penalize you if you take it out early. So now that people have lost trillions in investments, the government is looking for ways to force you to invest into a corrupt ponzi scheme that penalizes you if you thy to get what is yours back under your control. I invested diligently like a good little soldier. Now realizing that my money is held hostage for years and when I can take it out without a 10% penalty, the taxes rates will be so high that I will have lost way more than I gained through any tax deferral. Stay out of these accounts. Keep your own cash.

I live in an area that has hundreds families all living on the huge bonus money that Mom or Dad brought home from their jobs on Wall Street. Not dozens, hundreds and hundreds. Here, a million dollar house is obviously not close to the water and the 3-10m range is pretty average. The amount of Mercedes Benzes, Range Rovers and Porsches in the Wegmans parking lot on an average morning is beyond staggering. All of this is from Wall Street salaries and bonuses. What's wrong with that? Nothing, if their firms didn't take Fed money to make the payout. If it can be argued in a court that they did, they need to return it or face civil and criminal penalties It's not theirs until it's been earned. Until then, it's stealing.

I live in an area that has hundreds families all living on the huge bonus money that Mom or Dad brought home from their jobs on Wall Street. Not dozens, hundreds and hundreds. Here, a million dollar house is obviously not close to the water and the 3-10m range is pretty average. The amount of Mercedes Benzes, Range Rovers and Porsches in the Wegmans parking lot on an average morning is beyond staggering. All of this is from Wall Street salaries and bonuses. What's wrong with that? Nothing, if their firms didn't take Fed money to make the payout. If it can be argued in a court that they did, they need to return it or face civil and criminal penalties It's not theirs until it's been earned. Until then, it's stealing.

How can we learn ETHICS from the WALL STREET GANTSTERS.

There used to be a time when the FBI, SEC, and other regulatory institutions would consider the theft of $15 billion as something serious but I guess they are so busy celebrating Obama's inauguration that the government is no longer concerned over peanut losses.

Excellent Comments posted from a former ML Employee. I worked on the inside of the firm and saw the outrageous bonuses and expense money being spent. Needless to say I complained and was laid off. Guess I did not agree with the inside greed of these ML executives who raped the of ML stockholder and American taxpayer. ML bonuses were traditionally paid on the fourth week of January. It appears that Thain was corrupt as well as many ML executives in using bailout money to satisfy their pocket to push up the bonus payout to late December. When I was at ML I was told to look the other way, that I had no control of what was going on, that there were more smart people at the top that deserved these bonuses. I can now say bullshit to all of them cause they screwed ML employees.stockholders and American taxpayers. I hope some of them do go to jail.

The reason these problems keep recurring is that the people responsible never get punished in any meaningful way. They simply sail away from the Titanic in their money laden luxurious lifeboats. It doesn't matter how bad things get because of their actions, not one cent of their obscene bonuses ever has to be returned. Why should they change, it is working beautifully for them. I wonder if the election of Obama will change anything. I doubt it.

This goes on not just in financial institutions but across most large corporations. The boards are participants in the scam. They get a small piece of the action, and allow the insiders to stick it to the "stuck-holders." If you want to invest with honest, hard-working teams, invest in smaller, entrepreneurial companies where the management has a large stock ownership and reasonable salaries. Forget the big Titanics.

Even the sharpest critics of the bailout never imagined that it would be used to make wealthy idiots even wealthier. Are you kidding? Oh yes many people did,myself included. Why should they start thinking about other people now?

This stupid greed needs no explanation. Common sense tells us.

What happened to Sarbanes Oxley? Wasn't S/O supposed to protect Americans from Enron II? This is 100X worse. Has any bank executive been indicted? These guys were certifying fnancial statements they knew were bogus...and our government ignores it. Bring on Geitner....and maybe Bernie Madoff could be an sssistant.

WHAT'S 15 BILLION? BERNANKE CAN PRINT THAT MUCH IN AN HOUR.

Did you hear about the little addition to the TARP bill that Barney Frank added...... Some help to a local bank in his district in the tune of 14 or 15 million dollars. Not a huge sum of money in the grand scheme of things but it helps him out with some votes down the road. The greed of all in Wall Street and government makes me sick.

the American myth is that the country was founded to get away from the excesses and lack of regard for the ordinary person displayed by kings and their hangers-on. what we can see today is that democracy and capitalism can be perverted and manipulated just as surely as all of those other systems and political philosophies. Enron, Tyco, Arthur Anderson, Merrill, and (add your own companies and corporations) the politicians that enable them keep proving just how corrupt and immoral American capitalists can be if left to their own devices. mark my words: these people will continue to do this. they have no shame. as evidenced by their own words they don't feel as if they have done anything wrong. this is the system working properly according to them. it will take a great amount of resolve by a large number of people working to set up safeguards to reign in the impulses of their greed and their sense of entitlement. don't bet a lot of money that this will actually happen. chances are a lot of smoke and mirrors will be employed to make people believe that things are being fundamentally changed. whatever happens in that direction will then be dismantled, sooner or later by the likes of Phil Gramm and hucksters like Larry Kudlow. you can bet some money on that one for sure. i believe in the fundamental promise of our country. i've lived in several countries which are no better or worse. i would like to believe that a substantial number of Americans are now awake to what has been going on. i hope that we will remain so and have the resolve and determination to force our politicians to put some effective and practical restraints on the shysters and crooks that are stealing us blind and making a mockery of what we as a nation claim to revere. if we don't do it now and do it right our children and grandchildren will simply get more of what we've gotten.

Wall Street is in for much more ridicule. By the time it stops, most of these guys will have been fired, and the ones left won’t even recognize the place anymore. The party’s over.