‘Greed got us into this, greed will get us out’
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Of all the Lehman Bros. anniversary post-mortems out there, I think Allan Sloan at Fortune magazine may best sum up Wall Street’s status one year later.
From his piece in the Washington Post this week:
Even though some once-iconic names have vanished and others are shadows of their former selves, Wall Street hasn’t changed all that much. It still operates on the principle of taking care of itself first, really big and important customers second, everyone else last. Among the healthy firms -- which are poaching talent right and left from the dead and weak -- fat profits, swagger and the delicious prospect of juicy bonuses (regulators’ income-limitation attempts notwithstanding) are back in style. Business is good and likely to get better because of the huge demand for capital-raising services in a world that’s suffered trillions of dollars in losses over the past two years. This makes Wall Street’s prospects far brighter than those of ordinary people trying to cope with losses in their stock portfolios and home-equity value. Not to mention job losses. The U.S. government has been keeping the financial system functioning, at enormous expense to current and future taxpayers. The idea is for Wall Street to step up lending to people and businesses, making money for itself and helping the economy in the process. As one Street guy quipped, ‘Greed got us into this, and greed will get us out.’
-- Tom Petruno