The Banality Of Evil And The Truth About Complex Financial Systems

When I look at someone like Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein I see myself. In fact, when I look at Adolf Hitler, or Richard Nixon or any character you might find unsavory, I too, usually, think of myself. Is this some sort of narcissism? I don’t think so. Instead, I think that it is an honest admission that there is an incredible capacity for good and evil in every human being. I recognize morality, right and wrong, I recognize injustices done by one human to another, but, still, I also recognize how the will to power, or the German term I prefer, Machtgelust (lusting for power) exists in all people.

Greed is infectious but is rarely criticized when times are good. Now, when times are tough, all of sudden we see the complaints, the protests. However, I don’t think it was just a case of the top 1 percent getting away with a financial heist without quite a bit of culpability by average people.

I do believe in fact that large segments of American society in some way do actually benefit from this current system. And if you bemoan the present simply because you long for the good old days of 1945 to 1970- because you think that that America was something normal, or your entitlement, or that it was a period without corruption, you are living in la-la land. America’s enemies had been completely destroyed -at least economically- after World War II and most of us had it on easy street. Gravity is still in force in the universe, and you cannot defy it forever.

No, a more honest assessment is more sobering, more realistic. And just as I don’t think that we can go back to the mid-20th century, whether we like or not, the economic concentrations, the Machtgelust of indebtedness, the Machtgelust of the welfare state, the Machtgelust of the military industrial complex will be very hard to jettison. For all of my libertarian friends out there: do you really want to go back to the late 19th century? Do you really want to leave our complex society behind? Easier said than done, in my book.

Of course, this does not mean that a collapse won’t happen anyway. I mentioned the phrase complex system– and some more critical scientists will tell you that they have a nasty habit of just evaporating without much fanfare or without much warning.

I found it interesting that earlier in the week over 600 MILLION people in India were plunged into darkness.

I wonder if this is not a portent of things to come, where unrealistic expectations, fantasies, delusions, love of power, love of technology, love of easy riches, will combine to create the mother of all “teachable moments” when the modern human wakes up and realizes he (or she) is not God.

In terms of the financial casino, I also feel that every time someone enters the casino to play “their” game, that they are just as guilty as those who sit at the top of the vast institutions who condone and excuse the fraud, for example, seen in the mortgage loan industry during the Real Estate bubble of 2000-2006. The Bible talks about coming out from among them, that ye may not be a partaker of her sins— do those who sit in judgment of our financial industry really have the guts to follow through and to live apart from the womb of multinational corporations and banks?

Or, to repeat, is it simply a matter of time before some event removes all choice and forces us to respect the fact that no one is immune from having to ride the unpleasant waves of history.