For sheer chutzpah, it’s hard to beat Chris Gibson-Smith, chairman of the London Stock Exchange.
In an interview with a U.K. newspaper last week, Gibson-Smith urged the Occupy movement to stop blaming banks for the financial crisis and instead focus their rage on the real culprits – irresponsible governments and…wait for it…politicians
According to Gibson-Smith, governments caused all the problems by letting banks run up huge debts. Those damned politicians “allowed the financial system to explode by permitting the build-up of ludicrous amounts of debt and leverage.”
Say what?
ALLOWING banks? PERMITTING the build-up of debt? Who are these banks -- a bunch of unruly teenagers? And governments have been bad parents because they gave the kids the keys to the car instead of locking the little brats in their bedrooms until they did their homework?
They were idiots, apparently, for believing what bankers told them about the sanctity of free markets and the need to deregulate.
"No one ever said that free markets could or would be self-regulating,” sniffed Gibson-Smith. “That's where people over the past few decades have got it wrong, and many are still in denial – look at Alan Greenspan, who is still defending free markets."
Seems people got a lot of things wrong in the past few decades. What a bunch of maroons!
Wonder where they got all those goofy free-market, keep-government-out-of-our-business ideas?
No comments:
Post a Comment