Reuter’s says the increasing number of suicides is related to shame more than loss.
Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet (December 23, 2008)
Co-founder and chief executive officer of Access International Advisors. Duped by Bernard Madoff.
Adolf Merckle (January 6, 2009)
German billionaire who made a bad bet on Volkswagen.
Steven L. Good (January 7, 2009)
Real estate power broker.
Corporations have intruded into every facet of life. We eat corporate food. We buy corporate clothes. We drive corporate cars. We buy our vehicular fuel and our heating oil from corporations. We borrow from corporate banks. We invest our retirement savings with corporations. We are entertained, informed and branded by corporations. We work for corporations. The creation of a mercenary army, the privatization of public utilities and our disgusting for-profit health care system are all legacies of the corporate state. These corporations have no loyalty to America or the American worker. They are not tied to nation states. They are vampires.
Another gem from the NYTimes boards in response to Krugman being vacuous and unspecific.
One of my degrees is a specialization in the political, social and economic history of the 1930s. Prof. Krugman has nailed the central question about the current collapse. The 2008 economic crash is mimicking the 129-32 collapse. The remedies on the table - the best we have at hand - are the same as deployed by the New Deal. The circumstances as to the underlying capacity to generate jobs is far different - and that realization is like peering into an apparently bottomless black hole since there is no previous situation that is similar.
In 1933, the manufacturing plants existed - they were merely closed and shuttered for a lack of buyers for their goods. If a large enough portion of the populace regained income, they would be able to purchase the washing machines and cars made in US factories which would put the shopkeepers and manufacturing employees back to work and in turn those workers would have money to spend and generate more demand.
The problem is different this time. The US has stopped making things of value - real wealth that one can touch and use like steel, rubber, washing machines and other durable goods (which are different from a whole lot of cheaply made t-shirts and electronic toys.)
ATLAS SHRUGGED UPDATED FOR THE CURRENT FINANCIAL CRISIS.
“Damn it, Dagny! I need the government to get out of the way and let me do my job!”
She sat across the desk from him. She appeared casual but confident, a slim body with rounded shoulders like an exquisitely engineered truss. How he hated his debased need for her, he who loathed self-sacrifice but would give up everything he valued to get in her pants … Did she know?
The Moral Stage of Wall Street from The New Yorker. Thanks, Ben.
Swiss bankers are not known as paragons of transparency and moral accountability, so it’s a nice surprise to read that the top officials of UBS, the foundering financial institution recently bailed out by the Swiss government, will forgo twenty-seven million dollars in compensation and bonuses. It appears that these Swiss bankers have a faint pulse of shame.
It has not gone remarked upon enough that their American counterparts apparently have none.” The rest of the article…
