I was thinking about baseball the other day, sometime after A-Roids news hit and before the stock market smacked me upside the head. I have one simple question - what the hell is going on with America's pastime? Can we trust anyone? Why were the leaders asleep at the switch when all of this was happening?
Hank Aaron said to give the home run crown to Barry Bonds because there was no way of knowing whether he would not have otherwise gotten it. I have to hand it to Hammerin' Hank for a class move. Although I do recall him being conspicuous by his absence when the grouchy one hit number 756.
All of the financial weapons of mass destruction to me were steroids for Wall Street. The players got real beefy and made records of their own - until their internal organs shut down and their manhood shrunk. And where were the regulators.
Wow, baseball and the financial markets have a lot in common. It just goes to show how much crap gets overlooked during the good times and how hard the marginal greed-meisters fall when the times go bad.
Both are going to take a long, long time to cleanse themselves of all the crap exposed and yet to be exposed.
2 comments:
Hey Michael,
I certainly dont condone cheating.
Steroids, I guess allows for faster recovery from injury, adds muscle, and contributes to stamina.
But how does muscle improve hand/eye coordination and timing.
Barry Bonds had one of the best swings I have ever seen. It was quick, compact, and very balanced.
On second thought seems like traders might benefit from steroids too.
> And where were the regulators
Wall Street simply told the Govt that the instruments they created were too complex for the Govt to understand, and therefore, they shouldn't bother regulating it. I have worked for the Govt. in the past (not the financial field) and I know the attitude that private firms bring to the table, and they are partly justified too, but we didn't let it bother us - we still made sure they complied with the regulations in place.
Sure, Govt. is partly responsible, but the financial firms must shoulder more of the blame. They didn't want to be regulated, and because quite a bit of money flows from Wall Street to election campaigns, we can see why Govt listens to Wall Street.
How do you justify the uptick rule being dropped in July 1997 by the Govt.? To date, has anyone given a reason as to why that rule was dropped? Somehow, private industry has immense control/influence over Govt.
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