Guardian published an interesting list of 25 people it the heart of the meltdown listing 25 individuals and entities who (in their opinion) had a hand in our current economic situation. As indicated in the comments to the article, not everyone agrees with their choices which include Alan Greenspan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and others. Other people think that Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Milton Freedman deserve to be included as well.
My favorite nominee – American and British Public:
There’s no escaping the fact: politicians might have teed up the financial system and failed to police it properly and Wall Street’s greedy bankers might have got carried away with the riches they could generate, but if millions of Americans had just realized they were borrowing more than they could repay then we would not be in this mess. The British public got just as carried away. We are the credit junkies of Europe and many of our problems could easily have been avoided if we had been more sensible and just said no.
To that I add overly-encouraging real estate agents, overestimating appraisers, extra-helpful mortgage brokers and anyone who profited on these loans. The reason the scheme worked is that it was structured as a multi-level-marketing pyramid with profits multiplying at the top, while the bottom supplied new applicants. These were the members of the public too, just as guilty as the rest.
I wrote about it earlier, but some years ago I was predicting this collapse when it still sounded a lot like conspiracy theory and I’d like to be included in the list of people who saw this coming. I guess I am always pessimistic (and defeatist) anyway so my predictions didn’t sound out of character.Right now my pessimistic worldview tells me that no one knows how to get out of the crisis. Many qualified people offer solutions both in academia and business but any action would be experimental, and I can only hope it will be easy on the test subjects.
In the meantime I’d like to wish all victims of the economic crimes, especially local Sprint employees, good luck. Every day I think about what would happen if I lose my job and nothing encouraging comes to mind, so I feel for the people who have to make these choices today, on someone else’s terms, in this economy. There is no question your company was mismanaged and robbed and it’s not your fault (unless you are the one who did the mismanaging and robbing, then it’s your fault, I hope you invested with Madoff). I hope you will find something soon, a secure well-paying job where your talents will be appreciated. You’ll be better off even if the pay is not the same. Good luck!
Dean Reed was an American singer who was more popular in the Latin America and the USSR than in the USA. He would have turned 70 today. Because he was a communist sympathizer he was one of a few English-speaking performers approved to entertain the Soviet people. I remember as a child playing his records and watching him on TV and in cheesy Easter European Westerns. I read that he was sometimes referred to as the “Red Elvis” due to his popularity, I personally never heard anyone say that, but at the time I didn’t even know who the real “Not-Red” Elvis was, so I wouldn’t get the reference anyway.
No place makes life seem so short like a cemetery. Birth, childhood, first steps, first words, school, first love, family, kids, work, feelings, thoughts, achievements, joys, tragedies – everything that makes up a person’s life becomes just a dash between the two dates. Most of the people will never have anything named after them, will not be a subject of a documentary or even have their own article on Wikipedia; no one will want to dress up like them, sell their costumes or posable figures. At the cemetery we promise not to forget, but to the next generation a person becomes just an image on strangely colored photos, a subject of nostalgic anecdotes and a name on a small gravestone. Their children will wonder about the origins of their foreign-sounding middle names, tracing them on a family tree compiled by an aging relative, trying to capture the memories before they are slowly dissolved in time. The only difference between us and our ancestors is that we leave more proof of our existence – photos, videos, blogs, facebook profiles – these things will probably float around somewhere long after the end date is stamped on our gravestones.
No place makes a person want to live like a cemetery…
We only had one full day in Minneapolis so we had to make it count. Getting around the Twin Cities is easy, even considering horribly confusing twin I35 highways. On any highway you will probably find yourself to be the fastest driver in the city – the rest of the population competes in out-slowing each other and driving under the speed limit without actually coming to a complete stop.
Guardian published an interesting list of 25 people it the heart of the meltdown listing 25 individuals and entities who (in their opinion) had a hand in our current economic situation. As indicated in the comments to the article, not everyone agrees with their choices which include Alan Greenspan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and others. Other people think that Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Milton Freedman deserve to be included as well.
