Shame and Guilt on Wall Street John Hoover Sep 19, 2008 11:30 am |
![]() |
![]() |
|
||||||||||||
|
According to USA Today, the 54-year-old Brooklyn artist “has become a regular sight lately on the scene of big Wall Street fiascoes, where he gives the public a chance to vent by scrawling comments on his oversized portraits of powerful corporate executives.”

When a street-corner artist is the only person left who will instigate a conversation between the people on the street and the ivory-tower white-collar criminals who gamble away their retirement funds, I can’t help but shudder.
Toddo and the rest of the Minyanville A-Team have been warning of this dangerously slippery slope for years. Though others are also making such Monday-morning-quarterback claims, Toddo has the cyber evidence to prove it.
The troubling thing is not so much that Harrison rang the shark warning bell many times (a la Roy Scheider in Jaws), but that nobody, absolutely nobody, came out of the water before the blood started flowing.
Now fortunes, not to mention the lives and retirements of ordinary people who trusted a system that was supposed to be at least minimally regulated, have been irrevocably decimated. Where, oh where, are the navigational beacons that could have, and should have, kept us from running the supertanker aground? The fact is that those at the helm of the super-ship deliberately ran it aground. Or, at least watched lethargically as disaster approached, knowing their fortunes were safe in their executive exit packages.
Enter shame and guilt. As a former Disney executive-turned-McGraw-Hill-executive turned-marriage-and-family-therapist-turned-executive-coach-and-author, I have long subscribed to the notion that guilt is a sense of regret and remorse for what I have done and shame is a sense of regret and remorse for who I am.
I believed that the former could be used as a sort of healthy, “godly” guilt, to keep myself in line. But I rebelled against the notion that I should ever feel regret or remorse for who I am.
Now, after Citigroup’s (C) board “fiddled while debt crisis grew,” (New York Post, November 7, 2007) and Enron, WaMu (WM), Fannie (FNM), Freddie (FRE), Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers (LEH), et. al. tanked big time, I’m wondering if shame isn’t in order for those senior executives who profited from the pain and loss suffered by so many - even after the truth of their dastardly greed and exploitation was revealed.
If Sir Winston Churchill were here today, he would say, “Never have so few owed so much to so many.”
Neither I -- nor anyone reading my words -- is without sin. So drop the stones.
|
|
||||||||
| tags: | EXPLOITATION, REPUBLICAN, ENRON, CEOS, CORRUPTION, PELOSI, CRIMINAL, SKILLING, EISNER, PROFITEERS |
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
discuss this article and more on the mv exchange |
|
Get real-time options trading ideas from Steve Smith, veteran options trader and newsletter author, plus let him show you the way to cut risk and boost your returns through the strategic use of options. Click here for a free 14 day trial to OptionSmith by Steve Smith.
The information on this website solely reflects the analysis of or opinion about the performance of securities and financial markets by the writers whose articles appear on the site. The views expressed by the writers are not necessarily the views of Minyanville Media, Inc. or members of its management. Nothing contained on the website is intended to constitute a recommendation or advice addressed to an individual investor or category of investors to purchase, sell or hold any security, or to take any action with respect to the prospective movement of the securities markets or to solicit the purchase or sale of any security. Any investment decisions must be made by the reader either individually or in consultation with his or her investment professional. Minyanville writers and staff may trade or hold positions in securities that are discussed in articles appearing on the website. Writers of articles are required to disclose whether they have a position in any stock or fund discussed in an article, but are not permitted to disclose the size or direction of the position. Nothing on this website is intended to solicit business of any kind for a writer's business or fund. Minyanville management and staff as well as contributing writers will not respond to emails or other communications requesting investment advice.
Copyright 2009 Minyanville Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
| add rss feed | free article alerts |
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
DC
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennesee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Local Guides


















