Main Street v. Wall Street

The November 9th, 2009 issue of Time magazine had an interesting cover which read, “Why Main Street Hates Wall Street.” While there were several interesting articles and commentaries in that issue it’s the cover article that I want to write about.

Before discussing the article though I would like to comment briefly about the cover. The term “hate” really bothers me. In my opinion, we should be angry, frustrated and disgusted with Wall Street. But I would discourage “hating.” When we hate then far too often we forget that the target of our hatred is often times a human being, who then becomes ‘The Other.’ As a result we may begin down a path that ultimately ends in violence. Let us be angry but let us not hate.

Now, back to the subject at hand, the Time magazine article written by Allan Sloan which is actually titled “What’s Still Wrong with Wall Street.” There’s a lot of good that can be said about the article. It starts out with a very good analysis of what led up to the crash, such as the actions of AIG and Citibank. It then dives into the post-crash events in which these fat cats were bailed out by the feds. Sloan also centers his fire on those same execs that won’t have to face justice for swindling so many people and destroying so many lives. The article wraps up with some recommendations on fixing the system.

I have only two real criticisms of the article but I think these are important. My first critique is that it fails to point the blame where it belongs, which is the capitalist system itself. Instead, the article states that the failure was not enough regulations on the financial industry. This mistaken assumption leads to the second criticism, which is that the recommended solutions consist of simply more regulation and a warning not to blindly trust Wall Street.

Progressives need to drop these constant calls to save capitalism. These repeated statements that capitalism can be saved are starting to resemble the plot from “Weekend at Bernie’s.” Let’s just go ahead and acknowledge the demise of capitalism so that we can move on to a better system.