Ms. [Nancy] Lazar is among a group of well-connected investors and analysts with access to top Federal Reserve officials who give them a chance at early clues to the central bank’s next policy moves, according to interviews and hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal through open records searches. Ms. Lazar, an economist with International Strategy & Investment Group Inc., wouldn’t comment for this article.
The access is part of a push by hedge funds and other traders to get more information about the inner workings of government. Developments in Washington have become more important after the financial crisis in 2008 spawned new regulations and a stronger hand by lawmakers in businesses.
This article is infuriating and alarming and it is one of the things that fuels the current populism and the Occupy Wall Street folks. It provides a very legitimate reason to be upset.
What is important is to distinguish between capitalism and crony capitalism (which is what the article describes), and we have had far too much of the latter and it is badly hurting this country–indeed the world.
I don’t like having to subscribe in order to readthe article.
There seems to be no accountability, and that is helping to create a polarized political environment. On the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac years back, the leaders of those institutions and the Congressional leaders who oversaw those institutions and the bond companies should have all been required to make financial restitution. Not that the money collected would have offset the disaster, but people in charge should be held responsible.
This current report strikes me as illegal; we will see if people go to jail.
If you look at history, seriously corrupt governments do not last and massive transformation takes place. Many of our Founders warned against the abuses we are seeing here today. When the corruption becomes too bad, decent people no longer have legitimate means to reform the mess. At that point either a proper and just uprising will clean out the rot, or, forces bent on power will use the corruption to their means.
These accounts and the recent accounts of insider trading in Congress, not to mention what Buffett and Imelt may have been doing, could be pushing us toward a dangerous tipping point. And some, in high places, might be pleased to watch the tip take place.
God always has a faithful remnant in place; I pray that those who love God and believe in His Son, and who believe this country to be God’s providential gift to mankind, will be able in faith to pull this country back onto the right path.
It all gets back to relationships.
The first three of the Ten Commandments speak to our relationship with God and the other seven to our relationships with each other.
“Thou shalt not steal” can have a very simple meaning but in “the spirit of the law” it also speaks to speaks to ‘business practices’ such as “honest weights and measures.”
Free enterprise in a free market is, as the Romans said, is a “caveat emptor” endeavor, yet when the ‘playing field’ of a supposedly ‘clean’ free market is tilted by dishonest advantage then the free market is NO LONGER a free market and is contaminated with poisoned relationships between buyers and sellers that end up crippling the free market system.
So, a return to striving diligently to maintain honest Judeo Christian business practices based upon “honest weights and measures” is an essential first step toward ensuring the viability of our free market system.
That will go far restoring the damaged relationships between buyer and seller.
And the shunning of unethical/dishonest persons in the market place by ethical businessmen is a major first step toward restoring boken/damaged market place relationships.
What surprises me is that the commenters seem so surprised. This kind of thing is and always has been a universal phenomenon, and ever shall be until the world ends.