Save the Officers! (shoot the soldiers)

As a follow-up to my last post where I used the word "shit" in the title which was really a stretch for me, I'd like to say the following.

My wife reminded me today that back when the Savings and Loans collapsed, some people went to jail. We've heard nothing about jail time for the folks who managed the mortgage companies that are being bought out.

"Well, the S and L people actually broke the law." I said.

We discussed how the CEO's of the mortgage companies (and insurance companies, and any other companies that go under during this crisis) are going to be well taken care of. They didn't break the law.

"But they didn't do their jobs! Their jobs were to run the company and keep it solvent for the benefit of their customers and their stock holders!" My wife said.

I have to admit that she's right. It was the higher-ups, possibly the highest-ups, who were supposed to watch the trends, the markets, and the money. They were the ones who were supposed to know how vulnerable variable rate mortgages were, and they were the ones to create customer profiles so they didn't write a bunch of high risk mortgages. They didn't do their jobs...

But they are precisely the ones who will be taken care of in the crisis. The number crunchers who sat across from the borrowers and signed and initialled papers, who soldiered their companies, weren't supposed to be responsible for, take the heat for, or lose their jobs over, the incredibly shoddy way business was conducted, but they will.

When the allied forces entered Germany to restore humaness to humanity, foot soldiers were forgiven. They were merely following orders and the allies, knowing how vital that is to any mission, forgave them. It was the officers they rounded up, tried, convicted and executed. It was the "ideas" folks, the thinkers and planners, the one's who stood to gain the most from their own greed and lust for power who faced a very real kind of "firing" squad.

Oh, that we might forgive our soldiers and go after the officers at the end of this financial holocaust.