- ‹ previous
- 78 of 8902
- next ›
Should Wall Street Apologize?
This, from Andrew Ross Sorkin's New York Times Q&A, will probably make you angry:
Q. This may sound Pollyannish, but while you have been interviewing the Wall Street chief executives for your book, did you ever get the sense that they felt responsible or remorseful for the damage they had done? Or for that matter, did they feel any gratitude toward the average taxpayer for saving them?
Much of the anger in the country could be abated with a simple "I'm sorry" and "Thank you for coming to our rescue."
— Craig Wensberg, Millburn, N.J.A. I must say that one of the frustrating parts of researching my book came when I finally got to ask the question of Wall Street chief executives and board members that you just raised: Do you have any remorse? Are you sorry? The answer, almost unequivocally, was no. (Or they just didn't answer.) They see themselves as just one part of a larger problem, with many constituencies to blame.
Many of the most senior members of management on Wall Street now consider themselves "survivors," as if they were cancer survivors or something. That’s the word they use. While many of them are self-aware enough to politely nod at the notion that they received help and were part of the problem, they seem reluctant to acknowledge they were "rescued" or "saved." There are probably a few exceptions, so I shouldn’t paint them all with the same brush, but on the whole, that was the takeaway.
I recognize that that answer will only increase public outrage. But it is true.
David Corn asked a bunch of Wall Street CEOs this same question back in March, and got basically the same answer. David came away with the impression that "high finance means never having to say you're sorry." If we haven't seen any remorse yet, we're probably not going to see any going forward—the stock market has rebounded and risk-taking and bonuses are getting back to their pre-crash highs. I'd rather have real reform than an apology, anyway. I don't think we'll get either—But if we don't get real reform, maybe the next crisis will be so bad that even trillions of government dollars won't be able to stop the bleeding and CEOs will have to face the music. If that happens, I look forward to telling Ken Lewis and his ilk to go tell it to Timbaland.
Jesus Christ, fuck no they
Jesus Christ, fuck no they shouldn't apologize. Who cares?
The point is they should be fucking thrown in jail. The CFOs, the CEOs, the top managers, the boards of directors. All of htese assholes breached their fiduciary responsibility.
And fucking toss Geithner in jail too. He broke the law by not shutting these banks down as was mandated after the S&L bailout.
Apologize? Who gives a shit, really?
Unless you toss these assholes in jail, nothing will change.
Couldn't agree more. Don't
Couldn't agree more. Don't you find it difficult to express outrage at these douche-bags without throwing an f-bomb every sentence? It's obscene.
Best Practices from Abroad
tagged as:- solution
Not to be a douche but in China they execute their worst bastards.
(But then again China is a real Capitalist country, unlike most including the US. Take no prisoners, baby.)
Wall Street Apologize....
tagged as:- result
Well written article. Thanks for the stats. I knew the general gist of the facts... that the Dow had dropped far more under Bush than it had under Obama, but didn't know the actual numbers.
It's so tiresome to constantly hear and read the biased stories put out by the press.
Execute Them For Treason
Take them and congress and execute them all for treason. No trail, just a firing squad out on the lawn. Put it on public TV and you would never need regulations again.