Pogo: "We've met the Enemy and He's Us"

The media are trumpeting the news that Main Street is angry with Wall Street and wants someone punished. The folk on Wall Street are from a different planet? They live differently from the folk on Main Street? They’re alien invaders who have inflicted great pain on innocent victims?
Excuse me, who buys stocks and bonds? Who rushes from one hot tip to the next? Just the people who work along the old Dutch Wall? There’s a totally different society in downtown Manhattan that in no way resembles the one on Main Street?
Oh phooey. Wall Street sinned by over leveraging, by not being liquid enough, by taking wildly optimistic views of future prospects? By being greedy? By speculating? Too much exuberance -- taking on unrealistic amounts of debt?
Again, phooey. The young men waving their fingers and wildly bidding down on the floors of our exchanges are our own kids. They grew up in American homes that were leveraged to the hilt, hadn’t enough liquidity to keep a bank open, and where wildly optimistic views of the future were the norm.
These kids grew up greedy – they absorbed it in their mother’s milk and their dad’s speculation. They watched the exuberance with which televisions, appliances, automobiles, homes, clothes and groceries were all bought on credit. Their lives were leveraged at birth.
When a $90 field trip came up in high school, there was never any question like, “Can we afford this; ought we to afford it?” Out came the credit card or the cash advance. This was true of all of life. They were raised as if each home were a small government with its own printing press churning out money in the basement.
When these kid left Main Street (and borrowed their way through college and graduate school – leveraged education), what made you think they would suddenly become models of fiscal probity and discretion? Why would a lifetime of engrained habit change just because they were working for Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch?
If they didn’t know restraint and good sense before they went to work on the Street, what in Heaven’s name made you think they would learn it there?
Isn’t there any difference between Wall Street and Main Street? You bet your life there is. The misfeasance that takes place on Main Street is too small to bother with for most regulatory or taxing agencies. So the consequences are minimal to none.
I recall a friend of mine who owned his own store. One day he had to go to a wedding. He reached into the cash register and pulled out $20 to buy a shirt. That is so illegal under IRS regulations. But to put an agent in every store in America to watch for that kind of misappropriation just wouldn’t be cost effective – so it goes on all the time.
The IRS will tell you that one of its biggest problems is convincing a small businessman that the cash in his cash drawer isn’t his until it is duly recorded and issued as a paycheck. Until then, he is misappropriating just as much as any embezzler or thief.
When the same shenanigan happens involving millions or more dollars – then the IRS takes note and spends the money to get it back. Same thing goes on with regulation. Miniscule kinds of misbehavior on Main Street aren’t worth the trouble. But when its billions – or trillions – on Wall Street?
Yell all you like at Wall Street. Comfort yourself with the belief that “they” did this to you. But before you opt for big time punishment, ask yourself where this kind of behavior was learned. Look in the mirror.