by Roman Y

Created on: January 15, 2010   Last Updated: January 16, 2010

The blaming of the Wall Street for the financial crisis is just another example of lack of responsibility, accountability and finger pointing.  Yes, Wall Street was partly to blame for the near collapse; however it is not the only one. There is a lot of blame to go around. 

We can start with ourselves, the regular consumer, who became leveraged many more times than banks themselves. At least most banks had a steady cash flow, but not many home flippers in places like Florida did. 

We can also blame different branches of government. FDIC and Treasury for not requiring higher bank reserves or FED for only using interest rates as the only weapon to fight inflation and/or economic slow down (up until it was too late). 

How about that congress that did nothing when banks were making money and paying for their elections. It was the congress that was promoting the American Dream, house for everyone, without understanding that everyone can not and should not be part of that 'Dream'. 

I understand that Wall Street is not without blame, as they did create products that could not be understood even by them. However, where were SECs of this world? Weren't they supposed to review what is out there and whether it is appropriate for a certain audience? 

How come they did not uncover ponzi schemes such as the one ran by Maddoff for a long time, even though there were many red flags and whistle blowers. 

There are two problems with what has happened and what is likely to happen again.

No one wants to take the responsibility for their actions. Everyone is looking for someone to blame.

Wall Street sounds like the perfect scape goat, as it is directly tied to the financial sector of the economy. Yes it is true that many of them had to be bailed out by the tax payers. However, many of them have already REPAYED those funds with HUGE INTEREST, which resulted in profit for the US Treasury of about $45 billion according recent news. 

President Obama is looking to recoup more funds from the Wall Street by suggesting a special fee on large banks. However should it be the big banks paying more, which as already mentioned have repaid with interest and are making money again, therefore creating jobs and providing revenue to the US through taxes on those profits. 

Why not put a special fee on Congress’s salaries. They gave much money to the auto industry that was fatally ill; even though there were a lot of calls to let them either merge or fail. The end result, the auto industry is not really dead but jobs still have been lost, parts of the businesses were still shut down and they still do not make money, except for Ford. 

Who is going to recoup those monies? GM has laid out a plan to repay every penny, but we do not hear Obama putting another fee in place. Most banks have already repaid and those that have repaid will now be stuck paying for others.

Paying for others failures does not always work. Just look at the assistance that government wanted to provide to homeowners who were completely under water on their mortgages. They got a life line but soon after re-defaulted. However, those who were still paying bills on time even though with much difficulty, were left without any help and eventually began to sink.

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