How Wall Street Is an Asset

Let’s look at a single small example of how Wall Street is an enormous asset that needs to be exploited for common good. Please observe the following list:

Barclays, BNP Paribas, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bank of China, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Crédit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, Morgan Stanley, Mizuho Financial, Nomura, Citigroup, Societe Generale, Scotiabank, TD Securities, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, HSBC, RBC Capital Markets, UBS, UniCredit.

These are, of course, the world’s leading financial institutions, many of which are referred to as “Wall Street.” Do you know what else they are? They are the institutions that Putin asked to lend him money this week. And can you guess why Putin needs more money? Given that on the same day he asked for money Putin expressed disappointment with the slow progress of Assad’s troops in Syria and ramped up warfare in the East of Ukraine, it becomes clear that the money is needed for more war.

And what does more war mean? It means more death, more destruction, more refugees, more likelihood that the EU will collapse and the Western European social welfare net will be destroyed, more power to the far-right forces in Europe and, eventually, the US. Which, obviously, are exactly the results Putin wants to buy with the money he is trying to borrow.

Now, let’s think logically. Is it a good thing or a bad thing to be able to reach out to the companies listed above and get them to refuse (and convince their partners to refuse) Putin the loan? Or is the opportunity to rant about how evil they are (and they absolutely are that and more) more valuable? 

This is only a single tiny example among a bizillion and one of why every US government is kissing up to Wall Street. 

Now, let’s conduct another small exercise in logic. Let’s say the US conducts a “political rrrrrevolution” and sends all of the vicious Wall Street evildoers to jail. We can now remove all of them from the above-cited list. What’s left? Barclays, BNP Paribas, Bank of China, Mizuho Financial, Nomura, Scotiabank, etc. There is now no way of convincing them not to lend Putin money. To the contrary, they are angry as hell and willing to hit you where it hurts. And we end up with more death, more destruction, more refugees, the collapse of the EU, etc, etc. 

So unless the goal here is “world political rrrrrevolution” (and if it is, please accept my deepest sympathy for your tenuous mental state), that doesn’t sound like a fantastic plan. Even if it were remotely realistic.

And to conclude, the capacity to accept the world in its enormous complexity and not to respond to it with a neurotic need to simplify reality with reductive emotional slogans is a sign of psychological maturity.