While again many Americans are voting with their feet and joining in a haranguing of the New York financial capitol as well as regional financial centers, any observer needs to know the reaction to what is publicized as a Wall Street cabal and conspiracy is nothing more than a routine response to a significant panic that could further worsen conditions for turning the economy around and creating new commercial and industrial value and innovation. During the 1990's, when the individual investor became a securities market driver (see Death of the Banker, Chernow,) more and more emphasis has been placed on things like shareholder activism, capitalist agnosticism and throwing the baby out with the bath water when the subject of investment valuation is discussed. SEC Chairman Levitt's speech entitled "The Numbers Game," from years ago, outlines the accounting and other practices some enterprises used to freshen their accounting data and reporting. At the time it was given, the idea of more transparency had been cast by the wayside due to short - term profitability concerns of many companies as related to financial trading environments and equity share values. Chairman Levitt's idea was to stop the shenanigans accounting - wise and get back to some fundamentals in the mission of corporate finance such as assuring continuity of business(es) under the corporate umbrella and doing away with some questionable accounting tactics in addition to making the statements of dismal businesses representationally faithful so that something could be done about their related financial condition, even by regulators and overseeing authorities.
On a national radio programme yesterday, I did listen to an interpretation of the above with respect to what is now called (by O.W.S. personalities) a "sell out" of the individual investor, or small guy in a conspiracy among the members of the banking establishment. Blaming the established banking institutions and regulators, officials and law makers does not examine the scope of what people believed they were doing when money was "easy," and the only worry people really had, very many people in America, was their tax burden. These individual investors, and investors in various pension vehicles and other investments must not have fathomed (in fact, had not read the small print) about risks, particularly market risk, in implementing what turned out to be faulty asset allocations strategies, overleveraged investments and for what were for some a number of pyramid and ponzi schemes. Despite the evident market risk and other, more specific risks having to do with the types of investments some purchased or constructed, individual investors decided to demand more abnormal returns (those that are, simply, above average returns,) in a kind of herd that included millions of people who apparently, again, understood the benefits of market increases, but not the risk of what might happen if the market were to fall and the resulting risks of loss (and other things at stake, such as their mortgage, credit worthiness, and the like.) If there was one inkling in the minds of these millions of individual investors of the downside of any of the funds or assets they put at risk, it was the "government" would take responsibility for their losses through its various humongous financial departments such as the SIPC and FDIC, NASD (quasi - bureaucratic) and so forth.
Individuals are angry because they know they have been reckless and are not due anything from anyone for their losses - this is the remorseful thing, actually - and that is there were some crooks such as the Enron people, Madoff and his people, and the rogue and insider traders (Gupta and Rajaratnam) of late who have scandalised many, honest and hard - working bankers and other financial parties to the establishment. It does seem nonetheless the marches are a reaction to an unheard demand that someone individually take responsibility for investor losses, acknowledge the whole thing has been a mistake, and pay everyone back. Nothing like this has ever happened about a panic even as serious as the one at this time, and certainly not after the most famous 1929 crash, nor the 1987 panic. The marches and O.W.S. demonstrations indicate a kind of hysterics and anti - everything attitude and fervor and ensure an attack on the integrity of the financial system, and investors' rights before those who administrate their accounts. The entire O.W.S. movement could in fact result in investors rights and activism becoming more restricted, curtailed and cordoned as the result of the current national pandemonium organised by what appears to be professional protesters and demonstrators. There is an answer to the logical bottom - line question if it is, probably as it should be, away from "what happened," and more like "Where did the investment (premiums) go?" The funds that went into the market at high valuations, including the real estate markets, for assets that were purchased, constructed, devised, etc., even in speculating in those assets have been devalued themselves, some money has been spent, invested and even speculated again; some has been expatriated, and some is still there. There are many permutations to this as well about where the money went, and when huge losses are incurred by anyone, everything just gets wrapped up on the balance sheets of some large corporate entity, one or more. The annoying and more serious things are that people are now teetering financially and are harried by life's expenses and the system has no resolution for that at the moment, and despite the blaming behaviour of the O.W.S. movement that has really only distracted and annoyed the people, parties and bureaus capable of resolving the problems of the crisis are immovable as more difficulties are presented in once depressing, once again optimistic news.
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