“The truth is, we never questioned or concerned ourselves over whether the financial guys would or would not run wild. We only questioned and concerned ourselves with how we could get in on it.”

Very true.

I think the thing with free markets is, it can mean “free” as in the freedom to utilize and benefit from your creativity and work, or it can mean “free” as in, “Oh my god, this caged lion just got free and killed three people”. I’m a believer in the power of free markets in general, but it’s a power that needs restraint and oversight. Not to mention a net to protect those whom the market fails.

I guess I’m only absorbed in Wall Street’s guilt or innocence, as you put it, to the extent that specific actors are still calling the shots. I don’t need a Truth Commission or even prosecutions. I just wanna make sure they don’t get a second chance to rob the till, and I’m a little skeptical that TARP isn’t in some ways just that. Time will tell, I guess.

The long history of human nature is such that we know full well that if you present the opportunity to benefit from greed, those given that opportunity will exercise it to their greatest benefit. It is sort of like a squirrel storing up nuts for the winter. The squirrel doesn’t stop when they have enough. If there are still nuts to be picked up, they’ll go on grabbing them until the snow falls. Why?

Because that is what squirrels do.

This is precisely why mankind figured out long ago. Societies only work when its members are subject to a system of laws. It simply has never been any other way.

We can modify, re-create, re-interpret, change, argue, pervert, twist and turn the law — but we know that if we simply toss it in the garbage, things are going to eventually go badly.

When Wall Street was, as Joseph so aptly put it, , “let off the leash”, what exactly would a rational person think was going to happen? The truth is, we never questioned or concerned ourselves over whether the financial guys would or would not run wild. We only questioned and concerned ourselves with how we could get in on it.

Nobody should be surprised and nobody should expect this to change until we return law and order to The Street. If we don’t, they will lay low like an outlaw who is waiting for their latest bank robbery to cool off, and then do it all over again.

We can defend Wall Street or we can call for their heads. At the end of the day, who cares? Why are we so engrossed in their guilt or innocence when we should be completely absorbed with bringing rational law back to bear on the financial world?

I’m good with arguing over what constitutes “rational” law for Wall Street, banks, and whomever. We can argue about what is too much and what is not enough. But enough already with the past. It is now a part of history- and history is only useful when we learn its lessons and apply them to the future.

If we don’t begin focusing and arguing about that future, there just may not be one.