Stuck on Stupid : LA TIMES - The problem with Wall Street is they want profit

Crisis has not altered Wall Street

A year after Lehman's collapse sent the economy into a tailspin, the financial industry is still fixated on the pursuit of money -- a lot of it.

Really? Me too.

You'd hardly know that Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley is struggling through the chaotic aftermath of the global financial crisis sparked a year ago by the collapse of investment banking rival Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc.

At least not from the way Morgan executives are paying themselves.

Despite a large second-quarter operating loss, Morgan earmarked $3.9 billion for bonuses and other compensation. That was almost three-quarters of its quarterly revenue, far more than firms typically shell out.

A year after Lehman's record-setting bankruptcy sent shivers through the global financial system and sparked predictions of a wholesale reordering in the way Wall Street operates, one old saw remains: The more things change on Wall Street, the more they stay the same.

At first glance, Wall Street appears different in some major ways. Three marquee firms vanished, as have thousands of jobs and some of the abuses that took hold in the bubble.

But on the whole, Wall Street has recovered more quickly than expected with little difference in how it does business. And the unapologetic pursuit of money remains as deeply rooted as ever.

The problem is not the pursuit of money. The problem is that government intervention has merely PROLONGED the agony which greed imposes on itself. ALWAYS. Sooner or later.

Lehamn is gone and it's parts absorbed successfully. But the fear lingered because no one could know WHO the govt, ANY GOVT would save and who would die. The money injected by successive administrations to keep intact the greedy executives made it no further than the electronic invention of its existence to the cash reserve accounts of Goldman Sachs and their ilk who could then write off their excesses instead of presiding over the death of their institutions. Out in the field there was very short credit for small business and consumers. There still is.

"Certainly the greed on Wall Street has not changed and will never change," said Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities. "People come to Wall Street to make money."

People are nearly everywhere to make money, so what? The difference is that greed impelled Wall Street to create a system based on reward for transactions, not successful transaction completed to FRUITION. That means the 240th payment on the 20 year mortgage.

There is no question that govt oversight is a REQUIRED component amid the imagination, ingenuity and greed of men. All human traits. Yet this administration despite whacking around the previous for being asleep at the wheel (they were) has not yet done a thing to ensure that changes were made?

Our form of government chiefly through checks and balances has used human weaknesses and human traits to be successful, via the Constitution.

Surely we can come up with a regime to leave intact ambition, ingenuity, drive to make money and profit and prevent the instant reward for any and all transactions which lead to gambling without conscience.

Like ... some commission at deal signing, BIGGER payouts at 24, 60 and final month's resolution. Now that wasn't so tough was it?

One is required to ask amid the appontment of inside people one after another after another why this is so, and how WITHOUT the govt control and therefore FANNIE MAE/FREDDIE MAC screwups they expect things to be any different.

Perhaps some new Czar or Treasury Secretary should be the successful CEO or CFO of a company that makes things not the inside good ole boy of all these insitutions right back to the right sheepskin.

The nation, after all seems to have done all right under the care of a bankrupt men's clothing store owner who well undertood other aspects of economics besides the maniupulation of financial instruments for the purpose of creating more transactions to get bonuses on while calling these perturbations of money 'products' and sending the risk onwards to others.

Ambition is good
Drive is good
Striving for profit is good
Ingenuity is good

Greed destroys and should be allowed to do so

WITHOUT GOVT INTERVENTION.

Regulation of greed is impossible. Why not just regulate adultery? Or ban alcohol consumption?