No, This Is Not Envy!

Goldman Sachs and the Investment Banking Community will make record amounts of money this year. Prior to 2008, I would have agreed with the synopsis - it is all about envy.

Heck everyone's boat was rising and Goldman Sachs simply was the brightest of the bunch. The concentration of wealth and incomes was somewhat concerning but when I looked around, it seemed like my neighbors were all doing OK, everyone had a job, lots of disposable income, so I guessed the Ruebens, Greenspans et al knew what they were doing and if the meritorious prospered, so be it.

Fast forward to what we know now. That entire era was a facade. The jobs, the new homes, the disposable income were all the result of excessively risky and irresponsible financial engineering. Much of it undoubtedly developed and or promoted by those smart guys - Goldman Sachs. My neighbors were living on credit being given away by a financial system run a muck.

What have we learned? The infiltration of government, greasing the skids with hundreds of millions in campaign contributions and sprinkling in a few really really nice low rate mortgages to high placed officials allowed GS and the rest and the gang to essentially engage in unlimited risk taking as capital requirements were for all intents and purposes removed.

Today when I look around, my neighbors aren't doing so well anymore. In fact many are slowing dying in financial terms. Living off of what they thought they had saved for retirement. Property theft is up. Local parks are being shut down. And we all have this foreboding that times will only get worse when the 401Ks are drawn down completely and there are no more family members to turn to.

The weaknesses in our economic system are now being exposed and stripped bare. The high incomes at Goldman Sachs and the IB community were not because of some great improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of capital allocation. rather it was a reckless, wanton act of greed and gambling style operations that destroyed the livelihoods of tens of millions of formerly middle class individuals.

This is so totally different than a Sergey Brin or a Steven Jobs who in the course of amassing enormous sums of personal wealth have also provided permanent wealth and economic gains to society at large. We now understand that the Goldman Sachs simply takes and destroys. They do not add value, they destroy value. They do not make the world a better place in the "invisible hand" free market style. No, their invisible hands are basically the high powered lobbyists who are groping any and everyone with power and influence in Washington D.C. They in essence are stealing the middle class poor in order to enrich.

So, at least in my case, the "envy" is now anger. But more importantly it is a sincere concern, hopefully without sounding too melodramatic, for the very existence of our free market economy, for our values as a society and for our way of life.

I hope I am wrong, but I see that wealth and income has become so concentrated that the rest of society may not have the financial where with all to keep the economy self sustaining at any level near to where it was before. I see a political system that has been so corrupted by greed and self interests that it is no longer capable of governing for the public good. I see a society that is becoming obsessed with "gaming the system" rather than with the rule of law or acting with any semblance of integrity.

I see Goldman Sachs as both the symbolic and in many ways the actual source of the corruption and degradation of our economy, ethics, values, institutions and quality of life.

So my admiration is now anger. My respect has turned into disdain. I can only hope that my change in attitude is shared by enough other people so that real changes will be made to preserve our economy and society before it has been completely ruined. I do not think we have very much time.