Greed

noun- The desire for or pursuit of money, wealth, power, food, or other posessions, especially when this denies the same goods to others.

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I admit the recent string of setbacks on Wall Street have left me sad, angry and confused…Sad for all the fixed income seniors who have suddenly lost the metrics for retirement they so carefully planned…Angry for the lack of leadership by those we entrust with the public good…and confusion over why this has happened. But nothing I’ve heard or read left me in the condition I found myself after reading an article on Time’s website this morning entitled “How Financial Madness Overtook Wall Street. I was virtually apoplectic.

Here is the line from the article. Particular emphasis on bold copy.

“This latest go-round featured hedge-fund operators, leveraged-buyout boys (who took to calling themselves “private-equity firms”) and whiz-kid quants who devised and plugged in those new financial instruments, creating a financial Frankenstein the likes of which we had never seen. Great new fortunes were made, and with them came great new hubris. The newly minted masters of the universe even had the nerve to defend their ridiculous income tax break — much of the private-equity managers’ piece of their investors’ profits is taxed at the 15% capital-gains rate rather than at the normal top federal income tax rate of 35% — as being good for society.”

Oh baby, this sort of stuff has driven rational people into the streets. Are you kidding me? These guys have not only skimmed billions right off the top of our economy, fueled by lending practices that are nothing short of immoral, but they have been paying taxes at least 58% lower than everyone else in the country. And now the rest of us, who have been paying our taxes at the legal rate, are left holding the bag. Now I’m really angry.

Regardless of your political persuasion, I believe you would agree, this is a stain of monumental proportions on our country. We can begin to remove it on Nov 4.