12/20/2008

Obama cracking down on GREED

Our beloved model of progress, America, where we copied practically everything except for political system, is showing us how wrong that system is. The financial system has been a con game all the while and we imbibed everything wholeheartedly as the elixir of life. The culture of greed is mirrored in every aspect of our society to the extent that we idolised greed and brushing aside the little goodness that is left in the heart of the little man. We throw away all the goodness and virtues as nice sentiments that are not realistic in this brave new world of greed. The more greedy the more respectable. Allow me to quote a few phrases from a report by AFP, Bloomberg and AP in the ST today on what Obama will be doing. He slammed 'Wall Street for a me first mindset that fed the financial meltdown,...Congress, the White House, financial fat cats and regulators who, he said, "fell asleep at the switch".' There is the 'failure of oversight and accountability'. 'He pledged to "crack down on the culture of greed and scheming that's led us to this day of reckoning".' He thought the Americans were frustrated because 'there's not a lot of adult supervision out there.' The systems were supervised by a bunch of greedy old juveniles. The Madoff's case "has reminded us yet again of how badly reform is needed when it comes to the rules and regulations that govern our markets." We may not have cases of such a scale here, but we do have our shares of spectacular frauds. Maybe the big ones are waiting to be uncovered. The SEC under Christopher Cox, 'is accused by the critics of turning a blind eye to market abuses by well connected banks and financial firms. The agency failed to detect ample signs of trouble on Wall Street that lead to the global economic meltdown,...' Obviously the SEC were going after the small thefts committed by the little guys and closed their eyes to the big and powerful and well connected. The Americans have two systems, one for the rich and one for the poor.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

And SIN has one policy to make the rich richer.

patriot

Anonymous said...

Singapore watchdogs are too good to allow a Madoff type incident to happen here. Singaporeans are not greedy. I think you got it all wrong again. The govt of Singapore will make sure that they will not be any irregularities here in our island paradise. We are well protected, so sleep easy.

Redbean, stop your negative talks here. You might frighten the peaceful, serene and calm people of Singapore.

Anonymous said...

wake up and face the reality and stop liviing in fiction,sleep easy and your hard earn $$ will fly with the...

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

nice way of putting it. with the best talents with our interests at heart, we are so blessed.

actually if one is in the know, you can see all the worms crawling all over the place. unbeliever, but just open your eyes and watch carefully, and you will not miss them.

just like the american big apple, so well polished, and looking so juicy. but inside, all worms.