I saw this article over at Marketwatch. It is a commentary by Brett Arends. I know most of you won’t click the link, so I have copied the contents, which are below. It’s a spin on the Super Bowl add by Chysler, “So God made a farmer.”
To be read in the voice of Paul Harvey.
And on the eighth day God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need someone who can flip this for a quick buck.”
So God made a banker.
God said, “I need someone who doesn’t grow anything or make anything but who will borrow money from the public at 0% interest and then lend it back to the public at 2% or 5% or 10% and pay himself a bonus for doing so.”
So God made a banker.
God said, “I need someone who will take money from the people who work and save, and use that money to create a dotcom bubble and a housing bubble and a stock bubble and an oil bubble and a commodities bubble and a bond bubble and another stock bubble, and then sell it to people in Poughkeepsie and Spokane and Bakersfield, and pay himself another bonus.”
So God made a banker.
God said, “I need someone to build homes in the swamps and deserts using shoddy materials and other people’s money, and then use these homes as collateral for a Ponzi scheme he can sell to pensioners in California and Michigan and Sweden. I need someone who will then foreclose on those homes, kick out the occupants, and switch off the air conditioning and the plumbing, and watch the houses turn back into dirt. And then pay himself another bonus.”
So God made a banker
God said, “I need someone to lend money to people with bad credit at 30% interest in order to get his stock price up, and then, just before the loans turn bad, cash out his stock and walk away. And who, when asked later, will, with a tearful eye, say the government made him do it.”
So God made a banker
God said, “And I need somebody who will tell everyone else to stand on their own two feet, but who will then run to the government for a bailout as soon as he gets into trouble — and who will then use that bailout money to help elect a Congress that will look the other way. And then pay himself another bonus.”
So God made a banker.
I’m not sure why our society tolerates this. When I was a kid, bankers used to watch out for the less fortunate and the people who didn’t have the ability to watch out for their own money. I remember getting my first saving passbook. I looked at it everyday for a month. Kris had to empty his bank account to buy his first Colnago (from the Boulder Spoke) when he was 15. I’m sure he had to sit down with someone at the bank and have a talk. Can you imagine that happening nowadays? It was all much like Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Now it’s purely business, all fees and, like the above commentary so elegantly states, raping our society legally. They seem to think it’s a game of Monopoly, not people’s lives and well being there are messing with. It isn’t like it used to be. I sure wish someone with some scruples would keep a better eye on these guys.
