DISQUS

Bluestocking · 1 year ago

As a resident of New York state, my impression of Cuomo has gone up tremendously over the past few weeks -- he's one of the very few people who seems to be actually *doing* something to make certain that the firms slated to receive funds from the government bailout don't simply enrich themselves further at our expense. Let's face it -- they can't be trusted not to do that. At the same time, of course, talk is cheap and only time will tell if "grave concerns" result in any concrete actions being taken against banks which might be feathering their own nests on the taxpayer dime -- merely saying "No! Bad bankers! Bad!" isn't likely to have much impact on their behavior, is it???

Frankly, if the Bush administration ends up saying something like "nobody could possibly have foreseen that Wall Street would take the bailout money and keep it for themselves" between now and January...it won't surprise me in the least. Anyone who's a student of human nature and/or social psychology knows that at least a marginal majority of human beings are behaviorally amoral. Studies have been conducted which demonstrate that when human beings are given the freedom to choose between behaving ethically or favoring self-interest without fear of penalty, the majority will act out of self-interest.