Remember the lambada, "the forbidden dance" from Brazil? Goldman Sachs, once regarded as a "best in breed" investment firm, may have become the forbidden firm of Wall Street. One of their hotshot employees wrote an editorial for the NY Times telling how toxic the scene had become in the corridors and meeting rooms of Goldman. The leadership had gone to hell, he explained. At one time they actually considered the needs of their clients. This philosophy, placing client needs above all else, provided a rudder for the ship. The new rudder has a different goal-- making more money for themselves. Nobody tries to figure out what effected the change. The answer cannot simply be the passage of time (i.e.-- as time passed, people became more corrupt). Actually 143 years had elapsed since Goldman Sachs first opened their doors or whatever gets opened up at investment banking firms. I'm not sure they want the general public headed through the portals so maybe they open up a side door or maybe a secret trapdoor? But something changed beyond the scope of the company and contributed to the chaos of money grubbing so evident around the entire Wall Street scene.
The biggest change over the last 20-30 years has been the computer. The computer increases speed and transparency. Suddenly consumers could engineer their own trades with almost the same visibility to the stock environment as the insiders pulling the levers behind the curtain. Once we saw the Wizard and his methods the whole ruse was about to tumble. The last five years have been Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall and all of the SEC, congressman and regulators struggling to put Humpty back together again. Without the public confidence you cannot return Humpty Dumpty, the rules of the game, back together. And so the future looks chaotic on the financial front. A new system probably has been forming up outside of our awareness. We look backward for historic explanations. The historical record does not explain what is going on-- because that is all BC (before computers).
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