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The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes
An anonymous reader writes: The radio program "This American Life" has published an extraordinary investigative report on how the U.S. government regulators in charge of keeping an eye on the banks actually interact with powerful financial institutions (podcast here). Financial journalist Michael Lewis describes the report thus: "The Fed failed to regulate the banks because it did not encourage its employees to ask questions, to speak their minds or to point out problems. Just the opposite: The Fed encourages its employees to keep their heads down, to obey their managers and to appease the banks. That is, bank regulators failed to do their jobs properly not because they lacked the tools but because they were discouraged from using them. The report quotes Fed employees saying things like, 'until I know what my boss thinks I don't want to tell you,' and 'no one feels individually accountable for financial crisis mistakes because management is through consensus.'"
I pledge allegiance to my share
of the United Stockholders of America
and to the profit for which it stands
one stock, Class-B non-voting, with a golden parachute for our CEO
Amen.
We are still waiting for management consensus to trickle down to us so we know what to think.
Perhaps you didn't notice those names were in ALL CAPS, which makes his allegations very, very serious.