What if The Joker lives in the financial sector too

FutureJacked weighs in on the potential for a firestorm started by perhaps deranged members of the financial sector should peasants with pitchforks start marching down Wall Street. Call them the anti-populists.

Mass mood is darkening. Very intelligent men and women who lord over the nexus of finance that allows the division of labor that keeps 300 million Americans alive and kicking to function are being pursued as criminals for behavior many of them regard as totally legal. All it would take is one or two to succumb to anger and divisiveness that negative mass mood encourages to have ourselves a good old-fashioned market shitstorm.

He quotes from Epicurean Dealmaker, a financial insider

But can you imagine what would happen if you pressed them too far? If you tried to turn the entire financial industry into a bunch of unionized, rule-bound clerks? These are personalities who do not go gentle into that good night. All you would need would be for one or two of them to decide they would rather watch the world burn than crawl into a hole.

And believe you me, you do not have enough water to put out that fire…

FutureJacked concludes

Shit people, when we design nuclear reactors we always make sure the system is self-correcting, easy to shut down and does not allow for individual error to lead to catastrophic meltdown or a major reactivity event. You’d think that we would regard our system of finance with at least as much respect.

Rogue traders trying to cover secret losses have destroyed major companies. Imagine what pissed-off traders who really want to screw things up could do.

A populist frenzy might be great fun. Marie Antoinette sure had it coming – but then things really got bloody and that wasn’t quite so much fun, was it. Such a frenzy could also send the entire financial system of the planet spinning into a black hole. Because there are people like The Joker who want to watch the world burn. So do some of the peasants with pitchforks.

Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham lists the multiple villains of the current financial crisis, not all of whom live on Wall Street.

Charlie Gasparino’s new book is out, “How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System.” He thinks LTCM should have been allowed to fail in 1998 and that bailouts need to end.

The greed couldn’t have built up to the point it did without the government subsidizing it, and that’s what they did every time. Because this market blew up three times, right? In the 80’s, in ’94, in ’98, and each time Wall Street got bailed out, and each time they got bailed out they came back and doubled-down on their bets.

If you keep giving heroin to a junkie, he’ll just more addicted.

Why the press didn’t make a big thing about this: because it was impossible to see on a balance sheet, and the people internally that were putting it on the balance sheets, they were just so drunk on their own euphoria on making money.

And the party never ends. Until it does. Then comes The Jokers.