Are People Capable of Self Destructive Greed?

Ben Stein opined on Wall Street’s windfall on the CBS Sunday Morning show today. I cannot find his piece on the internet yet. It was excellent.

Stein first discusses the severe hardships and economic fears of the typical American family today, then he points out that the banks were rescued from certain oblivion only through hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts and finally discusses how banks are now rewarding themselves with record bonuses.

Stein then concludes by asking (to paraphrase); "Is this the America that we are asking our sons and daughters to fight for and defend?" "Is this the America that we were brought up to believe in?"

After his piece, I had an epiphany of sorts. Perhaps the greatest error of all in the past for Ben Stein ("everything is OK") and Alan Greenspan ("the markets will self-correct") was an error in judgment regarding the basic integrity and sensibility of people. Perhaps it was an assumption that: "Surely in a democracy no one would ever be allowed to intentionally destroy an economy in the pursuit of self-interests."

I suspect they both now understand that some people will take greed and selfishness to this level of destruction. Further that the political and financial processes can be and were manipulated to where the traditional self-correcting mechanisms of democratic institutions were corrupted and rendered inoperable.

It is mind boggling that we allow these behaviors to continue when they are clearly leading us down a path of self-destruction.