ThE VILLAINS
OF ThE PIECE
Who’s to blame for the economic crisis
enveloping financial markets this autumn?
Roger Crombie thinks he knows.
When the hurricane blowing through the financial markets begins
to pass and confidence is restored—probably after the outcome of
the November US Presidential elections is known and maybe not
before—fingers will start to point. Who is to blame for everything
that has gone wrong?
Barack Obama has led the charge on the “fat cats”, a catch-all phrase
that has come to define almost anyone making more than $35,000 a
year, the US national average. No doubt, some of the senior executives
at Wall Street’s investment banks and some other financial institutions
did their jobs badly and were over-recompensed. Certainly, it is hard to
understand the size of some of the pay packets that market leaders have
been taking home—but a few bad apples should not be considered to
have spoiled the whole bunch.
Similar political impulses briefly led to Wall Street being named and
shamed generically as the bad guys, and Main Street as the innocent
victims. Anyone with even the most basic understanding of economics
recognised that for the nonsense it was. Within a couple of weeks, as
the liquidity crisis made it difficult for solid commercial enterprises to
make payroll and for people to buy new cars, even the least sophisticated
among us began to understand that there was only one economy, and
we are all part of it.
Bermuda Re/insurance . November 2008 49
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