William Cohan, contributing editor at Fortune, former Wall Street banker, and the author of House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street reflects on the year since Lehman collapsed and talks about the difficulty of holding Wall Street accountable.
Comments [8]
A debt of *gratitude*? No, Wall St. owes us taxpayers a debt of *money*!
When a Company sells a product it has to deal with Product Liabilities.How come Financial Institutions selling Products have no Liability Seems like they can sell anything and don't have to pass any quality control so to speak of.Unless you make them put it through a set of quality tests treat the Financial Institutions as Gambling joints and let the Gaming commission regulate them.
I am begging you -- BEGGING you -- to please stop saying "skin in the game." This is the kind of utterly useless jargon that serves nobody. Worse, you always say it with this smarmy tone, suggesting that YOU KNOW it's useless, which just serves to distract from the discussion at hand.
Let it go, Brian.
"entire net worth" -- agree (i would add certain prison for law breakers).
that's not skin in the game but flesh brian. keep in mind the world's one true capitalist country, china, executes its worst corporate law breakers.
Brian please give the "you lie" a rest...it is not a joke and still not appropriate when you say it..darn sure not funny either!
Significance of Parsons leaving Citibank for a private equity firm? Think they will buy what's left of Time?
What in tarnation? Just what is "accountable" supposed to mean exactly?
Either someone breaks a law, or he don't. Nobody broke a law here--a year ago or today. This doesn't seem to change: 7 years after the explosion of Enron that was fueled by offshore shell companies, these entities remain every bit as American as apple pie.
No, the only difference between "before" and "now" is that a (probably miniscule) fraction of Americans may be able to resist Citibank's incantations to Live Richly.
Holding Wall Street accountable, truly, would probably require us to commit more fully to -- or against -- either Capitalism or Democracy.
And that skin in the game compromise? Merely the mouthings of cynics. Unless that skin is attached to the very life of the company, that corporeal being, that skin is merely the cost of doing business.
Bush castrated the SEC. They need their balls back.
Shouldn't there be a law about buying companies and then filling them up with debt? Isn't that one of the biggest contributors to the collapse? These private equity firms would buy a company on borrowed money, put all their debt on their books including 90 percent of the purchase price. They'd sell it if they could, but none of these companies can pay that debt now.
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