For example, the Great Recession was triggered by the financial industry behaving irresponsibly. They did so with government support, taking advantage of business-sponsored changes to the law. The global economy fell into chaos, and hundreds of thousands who were hovering on the edge of survival died. Goldman Sachs profited tremendously by marketing loans described widely in the industry as "liar's loans," and the world's poor took the loss. Thank you Goldman Sachs. Thank you Bear Stearns, AIG, and Merrill Lynch. Thank you Republicans and Democrats. Thank you, you selfish vermin, you who work so hard to win that you're willing to do so without a thought for the cost to others.
Wealth and power seem perhaps more a curse than a blessing. It's so easy to do harm with such resources. The obligation of responsibility is a weighty one; one which as yet hasn't shown itself in the financial marketplace.
"Without accountability, the unending parade of megabank scandals will inevitably continue," Neil Barofsky, the former watchdog over the $700 billion bank bailout fund and a frequent critic of the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis, recently told The Huffington Post.
There's no shortage of food in the world, by the way, and famine doesn't kill the rich. There's enough food, just not enough good governance. The problem of corrupt power in Rwanda or in coastal Somalia that ensures wealth for the influential ... that's the same problem of corrupt power in the U.S. and U.K. financial industries that triggered the recession. And the deaths of hundreds of thousands. That's what it's like to live in a world where you're not among the wealthy.
And now you know; that's how they see you.
Do not wait for leaders,
do it alone,
person to person.