Today, Greg Smith is resigning as Executive Director of Goldman Sachs. He wrote "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs" for the New York Times.
The Coffee Party Facebook page provided a link to this. I'm sorry that I can't give you a URL for it. What struck me about many of the comments was that many seemed to equate finance and capitalism; they are not the same. Finance is a tool of capitalism, but to mix metaphors, it has become the tail wagging the dog. See my blog entry "Finance is not capitalism", 2012-12-07.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall put a lot of muscle into the tail, and at the time only a few saw this coming. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) warned about this in a Senate speech in 1999. See "Byron Dorgan's Prophetic Words", Moyers & Company, Lauren Feeney, 2012-01-27. I recommend watching the full show: "How Big Banks are Rewriting the Rules of our Economy".
For more of the gory details of the collapse of finance, see "All the Devils are Here", by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. See also my quote from the book about the plea from Wall St. for more regulation!
