[W]e’re going to have to get used to a loss of trust. All those rock-solid people and institutions that we trusted with our money, our pensions and our kids’ piggybank savings — like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America — do not seem trustworthy anymore. Never before in my adult life have I looked around at every bank in my town and said, “I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer to put my paycheck in a mattress.”
Tom, Tom, Tom, you moron: you really don't grasp the full import of what you write. Cash your paycheck first bozo. Then take the cash and put it in a mattress. Finally, make a note to remember which mattress you put the money in.
The recent $50,000,000,000 ponzi scheme made it real for Friedman:
The Bernard Madoff scandal, of course, has only reinforced that loss of trust. His degree of betrayal — his alleged willingness to embezzle the life savings of people whom he had known his whole life — is so coldhearted that it charts new territory in human behavior. He’s on his way to becoming an adjective. Money managers are already being asked prove to prospective new clients that their internal safeguards are “Madoff proof.”
Hmmm ... about that new territory in human behavior. There have always been people willing to embezzle the life savings of others. A man once blew up an airplane to collect life insurance on his mother. That sounds pretty cold hearted.
The ACLU is out $850,000 on account of Madoff, per one of their phone solicitors who contacted me last night. The Guardian noted a while back that
[h]is alleged victims include hundreds of charitable institutions, investment firms and wealthy private investors.
An earlier NYT story indicates that Madoff's early appeal was to people who wanted to be in with the in crowd:
Initially, he tapped local money pulled in from country clubs and charity dinners, where investors sought him out to casually plead with him to manage their savings so they could start reaping the steady, solid returns their envied friends were getting.
Then, he and his promoters set sights on Europe, again framing the investments as memberships in a select club.
Perhaps in a Friedman world, the wealthy would never cheat the wealthy, at least not out of their life's savings. Well, not any more in Friedmans' world:
I knew B. Ramalinga Raju, the Satyam chairman accused of embezzling $1 billion from his own company. What’s really sad is that I didn’t get to know him through his business but through an interest in his family’s charitable work. They created India’s first 911 emergency system in their home state and call centers in Indian villages, so young people there could get service jobs. Was all that a fake, too? Or was he just an embezzler with a good heart? Don’t know. When you can’t even trust a person’s charitable work, you’ve hit a new low.
Those who have been embezzled out of their life's savings, THEY have hit a new low. Friedman's new low seems to have been hit because elites are embezzling billions. Perhaps they should just make theirs the old fashioned way: off the backs of slaves, indentured servants, and sweatshop workers. Or lobbying the government to reduce the tax rate on hedge fund managers wages, salaries, bonuses and tips to 15%.
If you can't trust the wealthy to look out for the interests of the wealthy, just who CAN you trust? Perhaps nationalizing all those financial institutions that are technically insolvent might not be the worst way to go.
