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Happy Anniversary (Not!)

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This week has, of course, marked the first anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse. Which triggered the global economic meltdown etc etc. (By now we all know the drill, alas.) Should the US government bailed the failing investment bank out, as it did insurance giant AIG, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and their ilk and thus avoided the biggest bankruptcy in US history? The blogosphere and US bookshelves are chock full of debate on this topic at present. My theory is that the powers that be simply didn’t like the cut of Lehman Brother’s CEO, Richard Fuld. Every crisis needs a scapegoat, and Fuld – a self-proclaimed business ‘gorilla’ who amassed an enormous personal fortune while presiding over Lehman Brother’s inexorable descent into over-leveraged, toxic asset hell – was arguably the perfect candidate. A bit like RBS’s much maligned former Chief Executive Sir Fred Goodwin here in the UK – only without the obscene pension fund and Monte Carlo tax haven.

Twelve months after Wall Street’s unprecedented meltdown and the hundreds of billions in government handouts to banks, stunned disbelief has given way to hardship and bitterness for many. Thousands of people have lost jobs and homes, relationship breakdown is rife – it’s been hideous. And to think that if we’d had tighter banking regulation, none of this would have happened. (Don’t believe me? Look at how the likes of France, Australia and Canada have weathered the sub-prime storm comparatively unscathed. Something more than just luck’s been involved.)

So on this, the first anniversary of the recession we didn’t have to have, what have we learned? That maven of financial misfortune, former US Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, is apparently already predicting that another economic meltdown is inevitable because it's human nature to want more. Which is a bit rich coming from the man who arguably paved the way for the current recession in the first place, if you ask me.

Yes, it might be human nature to always want more. But when we’ve seen the all too abundant pain that unfettered greed can bring, surely enough can sometimes indeed be, well…enough?

Happy first anniversary, folks. Here’s hoping the economy's in better shape come September 15^th, 2010.

Published Sep 18 2009, 11:08 AM by Mark Roy

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