We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful. — C.S. Lewis
At long last, the chickens have come home to roost. And what a mess they're making.
From Wall Street to Main Street you can hear wailing and gnashing of teeth as investors—big and small—review the balances in their stock portfolios and 401(k) plans.
Corporations are failing, the government is bailing, and white-knuckled investors are holding their breath wondering when and where the market will find its bottom. Foreclosures are up, and employment is down. Workers are being laid off even as retirees are looking for jobs.
Once proud corporate chieftains—long time advocates of free markets—stand with hat in hand asking the government to bail them out. Politicians are paralyzed with fear, and the public is mad as hell.
The bloom is off the rose. Irrational exuberance is a faded memory. Bears rule.
Perhaps you think the problems causing the market meltdown are economic and financial in nature. If so, think again. Such problems are mere symptoms of the malady. The root causes are moral and ethical in nature.
For decades, secularists in America scoffed at religion and her offspring, morality and ethics. They removed religion from the realm of "truth" and reduced it to mere "opinion." Truth was limited to that which could be objectified, quantified, and verified. Since that could not be accomplished with religion (at least on this side of eternity), "religious truth" was deemed an oxymoron. Absolutes were out, relativism was in. Morals became "relative" and ethics became "situational." Virtue was rejected as an antiquated notion. Results were all that mattered.
These ideas began to permeate society, including Wall Street. And since ideas have consequences, they began to influence the way business was conducted on the Street.
Unconstrained by morality or ethics, the marketplace became a veritable free for all—especially the housing market. The ends justified the means. Greed was good. Transparency became obsolete. Honesty was out of fashion. Deception was acceptable. The doctrine of caveat emptor was elevated to a new level. Mortgage brokers and underwriters gained large commissions by approving high-risk loans and passing the risk down the line. Investment banks packed high-risk mortgages into attractive packages and sold them off as "securities" to unsuspecting investors.
Politicians aided and abetted