jsc173

Banks: Just a Shadow of Their Former Selves

If the system was forced to go cold turkey, wouldn't that help define a bottom? It's been like throwing a drowning man a life preserver that's water soluble -- you gotta keep tossing more, hoping that he makes it to shallow water before you run out of life preservers.

If there was a permanent fix forced on them from the beginning (break up into managable businesses, bring all off balance sheet assets on, mark everything to market, etc., etc., maybe they wouldn't still be drowning?

Of course, the best solution of all would have been to let the market exact its punishment. Would a short death have been any worse than the slow death we're now experiencing?

Wall Street, R.I.P. Now What?

Puh-leez.

Once the "big kids" on Wall Street started playing with other people's money -- e.g., when the firms converted from private partnerships with their own money at risk to public corporations, it was only a matter of time.

It wasn't pure greed that killed them.

It was simple arrogance.

Or, as a wise sage once told me during the peak of the bull market, "they're like fat guys riding their bicycles downhill thinking they're going fast because they're good athletes."