Governments save banks, some of the managers of which save themselves with comfortable golden parachutes. American households that have lost their homes weren't so lucky. And they'll keep on paying taxes. To save the banks. Where is morality in this system?
by Laurent Pinsolle, Marianne2
Many authors, critical of neoliberalism [free-market fundamentalism], maintain that the neoliberal economic system is amoral since it is based on individual profit and selfishness only. One may wonder whether the current economic crisis does not demonstrate that this system is even completely immoral.
"Privatization of Profits, Socialization of Losses"
That's how the ultra-neoliberal free market newspaper The Economist summarized government intervention in the fall. And how can one not be shocked finally by the fact that bank bosses are dismissed with golden parachutes worth several tens of millions of dollars, that their banks are rescued at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, while several million American households have lost their homes or their employment, sometimes even both?
On the one hand, the most powerful can make mistakes: Bosses leave with enough to assure their descendants' living over several generations and the businesses are rescued by the authorities. On the other hand, households undergo a double punishment: the loss of their homes and the taxes they'll have to pay to save the banks that expropriated them!
Many authors like Robert Reich have described capitalism as immoral since it is directed solely by the quest for profit. But what's happening in the United States goes farther than that. To push modest households to become homeowners, banks conceived particularly dangerous loans, with reduced monthly payments in their initial months and variable rates, that represented veritable financial time bombs.
