Ayn Rand wasn’t a big fan of religion or freepers who live off the public dime. But her acolytes seem to miss those nuances.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in the London Sunday Times was explaining why he and his fellow bankers are so talented and essential that the rest of us should just bow and scrape while we open up our wallets to pay for their yachts.
Blankfein is one of the geniuses who nearly destroyed the world financial system and was able to survive only because of the $12 Billion he received from the taxpayers.
He understands that “people are pissed off, mad, and bent out of shape” at bankers’ actions. …”I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer,” he says. But then, he slowly begins to argue the case for modern banking. “We’re very important,” he says, abandoning self-flagellation. “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle.” To drive home his point, he makes a remarkably bold claim. “We have a social purpose.” […]
So, it’s business as usual, then, regardless of whether it makes most people howl at the moon with rage? Goldman Sachs, this pillar of the free market, breeder of super-citizens, object of envy and awe will go on raking it in, getting richer than God? An impish grin spreads across Blankfein’s face. Call him a fat cat who mocks the public. Call him wicked. Call him what you will. He is, he says, just a banker “doing God’s work”
Creating dicey mortgages and investment ponzi schemes is God’s work? This must be the latest version of the prosperity gospel. Only in 21st Century America could a corporate welfare queen say this with a straight face. If that isn’t delusional enough, he then goes on to claim that if the bankers go down they will take the rest of us with them.
Does Blankfein not acknowledge that it is maddening for most of us to watch Goldman gobble up so much cash while we struggle? Quite the opposite. He insists we should be celebrating his bank’s success, not condemning it. “Everybody should be, frankly, happy,” he says. Can he be serious? Deadly. Goldman’s performance, he argues, is the firmest indication of a nascent economic recovery that will benefit not just him and his firm but all of us. “The financial system led us into the crisis and it will lead us out.”
… “I’ve got news for you,” he shoots back, eyes narrowing. “If the financial system goes down, our business is going down and, trust me, yours and everyone else’s is going down, too.”
We’ve been shoveling money at the rich for the last few decades and that has nearly brought us to ruin. Now they intend to blackmail us for the table scraps and want moral praise to boot!
Blessed are the bankers for they shall indeed inherit the earth.
