The implosion of Obama's billionaire buddy's MF Global, apart from exposing the appalling crimes of Wall St. -- yet again, anyone listening? Buehler?-- also has lead many to adopt our meme of the Talmudic Economy.
Of course, they can't say that, not publicly.
But they try. Oh, they try.
6 things no one will tell you about MF Global
Commentary: This is what’s wrong with the economy
By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
6. We are all Marxists nowBut no, I’m not talking about Karl Marx. I’m talking about Groucho: He’s the guy who really predicted how the modern economy would evolve.
[Get it? "Groucho's parents were Minnie Schoenberg Marx and Sam Marx"]
We're all "Marxists" now. Or at least, if you count, you are.
MF Global says that it employs about 3,000 people. And these were good — meaning high-paying— jobs. According to the latest filings, the average MF Global employee earned about $46,000 last quarter — or $184,000 a year.
That’s the average. Account for the support staff and so on, and the traders and risk-takers were pocketing serious coin.
It’s pretty much the same across Wall Street. But what are they actually doing? They’re just playing poker against each other. They’re engaged in an “industry” that produces neither iPhones nor brain scans nor pizzas. There is no output. There is no wider social purpose. They just trade paper against one another. Like most of Wall Street, it’s just a zero sum game.
"Just a show about nothing!"
Hard to believe, but there are actual people — lots of people — who think that what the U.S. economy needs is more MF Globals to trade against one another. Then our employment problem would be solved!
Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan
once told a crowd in Boston that America should pretty much leave manufacturing to China and concentrate on our “core competence” of running financial firms. Like MF Global, no doubt. Or Lehman Brothers.
"What you mean 'our' competencies"?Me? It just reminds me of the opening sequence of the Marx Brothers classic, “A Night At The Opera.” It was filmed in 1934, at another time when jobs were in desperately short supply.
Margaret Dumont, playing a rich, social-climbing widow, is rebuking Grouch Marx, who plays an adventurer called Otis B. Driftwood. “Mr. Driftwood,” she says severely, “Three months ago you promised to put me in ‘society.’ In all that time, you have done nothing but draw a very handsome salary!”
Grouch looks at her in astonishment. “You call that not working?"
Uh, yeah, wise ass, I do. Mayhap it's time for another "Otis B. Driftwood" to pay a visit to Wall St.
"Boy, the next word that comes out of your mouth better be some brilliant fuckin' Mark Twain shit. 'Cause it's definitely getting chiseled on your tombstone."
1 comments:
James, I note that you have been very scathing of Richard Dawkins in previous posts yet you use the word 'meme' in your title which is a Dawkinism. I think the idea that a meme is somehow alive, a virus like thing, is a very interesting concept. Its like everyone around us is infected by a meme that blinds them and turns them into victims.
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