A change in the culture? Not a chance

Trying not to be grouchy about all the economic news, but it's next to impossible. There's a lot of outrage and unrest in the world that is hard to ignore. If I was a politician or corporate board member it would be easy to turn my back on it, but even that is getting more difficult.

The former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland had his house vandalized. Employees of AIG have received some threatening mail and there has been yet another round of rioting in France.

Are the powers that be ever going to get it?

Then there's Jake Desantis of AIG, who publicly resigned earlier this week. I'm trying hard not to blow my top over this one. He deflected responsibility from himself, saying he did a good job.

You know, if you are on a baseball team that loses 100 games, it does not matter if you hit .340, or won 27 games like Steve Carlton did when the 1972 Phillies won only 59 games - your team still stinks.



Desantis smelled the bonus money and pouted when he did not get it. It's refreshing to know he had an adequate savings so that he and his family could afford to live on his token dollar a year salary. Guy wanted a bonus while his company lost about seven thousand dollars a minute during the last quarter of 2008. Sure, give him a bonus. Send him a balloon bouquet.



I'm never sure on Rolling Stone's journalism commitment these days (or anyone's really), but this article is a good primer to the inbreeding of our government and the financial system. A lot of hysteria in some of the quotes, but some decent information too.

Today I read that our government now wants to regulate the banking industry. Again. So will they be repealing the repeal of Glass/Steagal, the act the banking industry paid congress to do for them in the 90's? Now many of these same government officials are going to try and dismantle the monster they helped build.

You believe that you do not have an ounce of cynicism in you.