Stopped Clock Is Right Alert

Being issued today for Jim Pethokoukis.

If I made of list of factors contributing to the recession and financial crisis, Wall Street pay would come in around 6th, after 1) easy monetary policy; 2) TBTF; 3) US housing policy; 4) global savings glut/China labor shock; 5) Wall Street group think. Yet pay is where so much energy is being directed at this issue thanks to its populist appeal. America hates TARP so Washington needs to make amends by hammering execs at TARP recipients.

And what's maddening is that he so easily sees the problem, and yet has no frigging clue how to fix it other than "less onerous regulation".

[UPDATE 9:53 AM] Then again, there's a reason why America is populist pissed off at these clowns.

I’m surprised this isn’t a bigger story, though perhaps it hasn’t yet migrated from England to the US. The vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Lord Griffiths (and doesn’t it just fit that he’s a lord), said yesterday in London at conference on “morality and markets” (!) that the public most learn to tolerate inequality as the price to be paid for prosperity, a stunning quote given recent events in the global financial markets.

Seriously. The guy said that the British public should “tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all”. That's the argument. You poor people are going to have to deal with us rich people controlling the universe if you want our scraps.