Wednesday, April 21, 2010

OF ROTTEN SAUSAGES AND WALL STREET (GOLDMAN SAUSAGES?)


"Daniele, Inc. announced Jan. 23, 2010 a voluntary recall of approximately 1.24 million pounds of pepper-coated salami because of possible concerns of salmonella. The company recalled the product after officials conducting a months-long, multi-state investigation of a salmonella outbreak compared shopping receipts of those who got sick," The outbreak sickened 184 people in 38 states since July."--Chicago Tribune

What happens when large numbers of consumers suddenly fall ill with symptoms of food poisoning? Emergency measures are taken to isolate the cause and and implement remedial public safety measures.  Potentially tainted products are suspended and/or recalled, supply sources are investigated, factories are shut down, violators of existing laws are punished, consumers are warned and, when necessary to prevent future outbreaks, new regulations are enacted.

Q: What is the difference between Wall Street and rotten sausage factories?

A: The package.

As we have been reminded this week, the causes of the subprime outbreak are well known, Wall Street ran a giant unregulated subprime sausage factory. That factory produced tons of tainted product that caused untold financial illness for banks, pension funds and other large unsophisticated institutional sausage gluttins like AIG.

Now the question is what is going to be done?

Are we going to allow Wall Street to continue to produce new kinds of unregulated and potentially lethal sausages?

Are we going to let Wall Street build ever more complex sausages in quantitative sausage factories?

Are we going to listen to Wall Street's assertion that too much sausage regulation is bad for American business?

Will we agree that sausage factories are not food manufacturers, but merely intermediaries matching hungry sausage addicts with piles of semi-putrified meat wrapped in pig intestines?

Is it ok to sell sausages stuffed with undocumented liers meat simply because there are people who love to play sausage roulette

Are we going to increase our consumption of rotten financial sausages so Wall Street can continue to pay huge bonuses to its best and brightest quantitative sausage stuffers?

Will we allow Wall Street to make sausages that are just 2Big2Digest?

Should sausage factories be bailed out? If so who should fund it?

Will a council of systemic sausage regulators prevent future outbreaks?

Do we really need trillions of dollars of sausage innovation to survive the future?

Why did German bankers love sausages so much?

These are just a few of the profound questions that will be considered on Capitol Hill in the coming days.

Stay tuned folks...

The less people know about how sausage and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night. — Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

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