Root of all Evil

“For many years, the public image that Wall Street has tried to portray of itself is this: A group of careful, gray-haired, well-coiffed, experienced, thoughtful older men and women who care for your money and help you get that yacht you deserve when you retire.”

Ben Steins commentary caught my attention on CBS Sunday Morning. “But in recent decades, you might do better to think of the people of Wall Street as a bunch of wild, out of control fraternity boys, drunk on money and power, making stupendous, unimaginably big bets with your money on events you have only a dim idea about.”

Linn and I had a 401k that lost almost a third of it’s value since the November2008 melt down. Some one in New York, on Wall Street was supposed to be watching out for us. We didn’t want a yacht, but we did want to retire someday. Would that still be possible? Would there by anything in Social Security or Teacher Retirement?

The image of my dad came to mind…him shaking his head at some news from Wall Street as I was growing up… “Sons-of-bitches…It’s just the big ones eating the little ones.”

Dad never owned a single share of stock in his life. Not surprising for man who nearly lost his family farm during the Great Depression. Making a living farming cotton on a dry piece of ground in Dawson County near Lamesa, Texas was tough enough during the dust bowl days of the mid 1930’s. And the Wall Street made mess of 1929 still had a death grip on small town banks a half decade later in little places like Lamesa. He, like millions of other “little guys” was not at all shy about crediting President Roosevelt with saving him. Roosevelt, his almost deified hero, stopped banks from foreclosing on small farms and businesses.

The devastating financial collapse would reverberate through the lives of the survivors, and their children…something like post traumatic stress disorder.

I was feeling it…the economic paranoia…as Stein continued; “When these bets pay off for the frat boys they have staggering paychecks. If things go bad, you - Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer - might wind up picking up the tab. Sometimes, the frat boys try to fraudulently rig the game, too, apparently, as the SEC recently alleged against Goldman Sachs, the huge financial house.”

“Sons-of-bitches…”

Dad hated business…especially Wall Street and big business which he saw as the enemy of the common working man. He hated bankers and anyone who played golf, the game of leisure for the rich. And he especially hated republicans….the foulest of all four letter words in his salty vocabulary, just one word worse than “Yankee” a little up from “Frat boy.”

I blushed thinking of what dad would say if he knew I’d voted republican, owned stock and played a little golf….well, at least I wasn’t a “frat boy.”

Stein: “Imagine a group of drunken frat boys playing with nuclear missiles, as Warren Buffett suggested in an analogy, and you have the general idea. You don't even have to imagine it! This is what led to the current recession. It wasn't overly ambitious homeowners in Modesto or Miami; it was wild men on Wall Street.

Some drunken greedy frat boy gambling with my money…demanding, and getting a bonus while we loose on our 401k…. So was Dad right??? Was I just another “small one” getting gobbled up by a “big one”???

To Dad, anyone who owned a stock was a fool. The stock market, a financial game rigged by the establishment for the establishment. Sure, sometimes a “little guy” would make some money. But that was just to sucker in other dupes…much like the games on the midway of a county fair.

Growing up in the shadow of the Great Depression wasn’t easy. Often it seamed like our lives were spent preparing for the next big financial collapse, which, by my parents reckoning, would surely come. Like so many Americans of their time, and ours, my parents were frugal out of necessity, never financially savvy.

Dad did his best to earn a living…from farming to war worker…back to farming…and then to sales…ending up in life insurance. Even though we were living in a city, we still spent our summers picking beans and peas and canning for the winter. Nothing of the slightest use or value was thrown away, such as tin foil, string, or even Christmas wrap

Any positive financial news, a Wall Street report, was met with scoffs and skepticism, while any profit of doom was taken seriously.

Teenagers grow weary of the wisdom of the ages, as I did. I believed in my country. I would get an education and live the “American Dream.” I believed that going to college would mean I would get ahead…and if I worked and saved I could be financially secure.
For 30 years of adulthood I believed that…But after the collapse of Enron, and World Com and the massive melt down of the entire financial system, what was left to believe in?

Stein; “Time for the grown-ups to step in and take the weapons of financial mass destruction away from the party-hearty crowd. Time to keep the specter of another Great Depression far from our American door. Good night, boys! Take your Ferraris and go home! Vroom Vroom! “

The “grown-ups” … ???

Were there any good men who would do the right thing for the right reason? Or, was I destined to be the next meal in the financial food chain?

As the segment ended I remembered by dad quoting from the old testament in a sardonic tone…. “The love of money is the root of all evil….Sons-of-bitches.”