BusinessWeek: Wall Street's Economic Crimes Against Humanity

[marmar]

Wall Street's Economic Crimes Against Humanity
By refusing to consider the consequences of their actions, those who created the financial crisis exemplify the banality of evil, writes Shoshana Zuboff

By Shoshana Zuboff


The financiers at AIG were awarded millions in bonuses because their contracts were based on the transactions they completed, not the consequences of those transactions. A 32-year-old mortgage broker told me: "I figured my job was to get the transaction done…Whatever came after the transaction—that was on him, not me." A long list of business executives have reaped sumptuous rewards even though they fractured the world's economy, destroyed trillions of dollars in value, and disfigured millions of lives.

Most experts now blame a lack of regulation and oversight for this madness. Or they point to misguided incentive programs associated with the push for shareholder value that tied executive rewards to a firm's share price. These factors are surely important, but they ignore the terrifying human breakdown at the heart of this crisis.

Each day's economic news leaves me haunted by Hannah Arendt's ruminations on Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann as she reported on his trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker 45 years ago. Arendt pondered "the strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil" and sought to capture it with her famous formulation "the banality of evil." Arendt found Eichmann neither "perverted nor sadistic," but "terribly and terrifyingly normal."

Remoteness from Reality

He was a new type of criminal, a participant in "administrative massacre" who committed his crimes "under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong." Eichmann had no motives other than what Arendt described as "an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement…he never realized what he was doing.That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together," she concluded, "…was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem." .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/mar2009/ca20090319_591214.htm

[marmar]

1. Shameless afternoon self-kick......

:kick:

[Lugnut]

2. K&R n/t

[tomreedtoon]

3. Business Week is the banality of evil.

They were cheerleaders for this sort of thing, all along. They were important leaders of the pagan religious cult called "business." So now they have something of a sense of guilt? Bite me.

[nichomachus]

4. Wow -- when the cheerleaders turn against the team, things start to get nasty

[gratuitous]

5. Don't overlook the point

The crooks at these high-flying financial corporations don't have horns sticking out of their foreheads. They don't carry little red pitchfords or have cloven feet. No, they're regular family men and some women, dress nicely, pay their bills on time, and go camping on summer weekends. During their work day, the results of their jobs take food out of the mouths of children, throw widows and orphans into the street, and line the overstuffed pockets of people already wealthy beyond the ken of mere mortals.

They follow the NCAA tournament, just like you do. Their sons and daughters vote for their favorites on American Idol. They attend the house of worship of their choice, coach Little League, and pick up trash twice a year along a stretch of highway. Then comes Monday morning, and they're back to their business, which impoverishes millions for the enrichment of hundreds.

And they look just like you and me. Except with a nicer haircut than me.

[JDPriestly]

6. Thanks. Great article. And BusinessWeek? Wow! The Times They Are Achanging.

[malaise]

7. Thank you Jon Stewart

You punched them in the gut and a few of them are waking up.
As I read this I couldn't help thinking that this article might have easily been about Bush and his goons.

Good read.