Where Are The Muckrakers When You Need Them?

While agreeing with Bobby Chandler (Oct. 26) that capitalism is the best economic system ever devised and that Michael Moore can’t cure its ills, I don’t share his optimism that we can impose a system of checks and balances to make it work for most of us. Capitalism’s headlong plunge to join the dodo bird in extinction is no longer disputable. Even the best economic system ever devised is fragile. With Gordon Gecko as their role model, the titans of finance have irreversibly undermined capitalism. These are a group of men so driven by self-indulgence that the continued existence of the world economic order seems a minor concern to them. 

Just 13 months ago we stood on the brink of economic collapse caused by the deranged avarice of wall street powerhouses - spurred on by misguided politicians -  who turned worthless mortgages into an international ponzi scheme.  In a government grab for a flotation device before going under for the last time, we gave hundreds of billions to AIG and others who used the public’s money to award themselves billions in bonuses for behaving badly. In recent news we learn that AIG is about to bestow another $198 million on its failed executives if the company chooses to ignore, as it apparently can, the government’s pleas for restraint.

In more directly  prosecutable criminal activity, we learn that IRS loses $100 billion a year in tax revenue because the super wealthy set up unnumbered accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. The glue that once held the system together was the sense of shame that restrained would-be perpetrators.  Now that greed has made shame obsolete, there appear to be no limits to the mafia mentality that undermines our capitalistic system. Under performing CEO’s who lack accountability while earning 100 times as much their workers foster a tone of “anything goes as long as I get mine”  within their organizations. 

Those at the peak of the financial pyramid have something in common with those who run the healthcare industry.  They are among the most richly rewarded members of the business community, and they add nothing to their product to merit that status.  By buying one political party and making a down payment on the other, along with purchasing the appropriate number of congressmen, both groups acquire exemption from the checks and balances that might otherwise protect our endangered financial system.

Our words and our wishes will not bullet proof our economic system.  It is being plundered by plutocrats with a certainty that they will not be prosecuted. There are still great companies, but within the financial community their number is dwindling, and none are immune from the obscene excesses of those too big to fail.