Comment on Helplessness re Friedman's Article

32.
November 26, 2008 6:45 am
Link
There are surely few more horrible conditions in human experience than the feeling of utter helplessness. For weeks and weeks now we have been reading of the inadequacies of highly-paid, upper crust, well-educated people who have been running into the ground just about every major financial institution in the nation - and getting away with it. And it appears that no one - NO ONE - is in a position to turn things around in any way other than passing out unimaginable sums of government money - money that came from, or will come from, taxpayers like little old me and little old you. And it appears that there is no one - NO ONE - capable of managing these "saved" institutions except the people who were managing them when they went bust. And I, along with tens of millions of other taxpayers, am utterly helpless to do a damned thing about it, except write comments like this and letters to the editor.Hopelessness is horrible, dreadful, sick-making, demoralizing in the extreme; but do I, do you, have any choice in the matter? For pity's sake, we are being told, it appears, that so many of the factors in play while these institutions were being destroyed are outside the law that there are no grounds for indicting all the scores and scores, hundreds and hundreds of men and women who took the single actions, hour after hour, day after day, which when put together did as much damage to the nation's spirit as the pilots of the two planes that flew into the towers of the World Trade Center. One has to admit that there has been none of the cold-blooded murder of that horrendous day seven Septembers ago, But who is to say how many lives will be shortened, how many destroyed, by the stress and strain of having to deal with day-by-day ghastly situations for which they are not prepared.Rather than feeling help-less I would like to feel help-ful (which is what I usually am, or try to be, when I encounter misery and pain.) But WHAT can we little people do to help the most damaged victims of the loathsome behavior of the battalions of senior members of the finance industries, beyond shelling out on April 15 every year for the rest of our lives, our as-calculated-by-the-government shares of the cost of the "rescue packages" of 2008 and 2009.What can we do?Other than to feel helpless. And to try to understand (and then abolish?) a system of governance which allows (requires, I suspect he would say) the chairman of the House committee with oversight authority for the finance, insurance, and real estate industries to accept $800,000 - EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS - from people and institutions in those industries towards the cost of ONE year's election campaign.
— Ruskin, Buffalo, NY