The formidable blogger The Epicurian Dealmaker (who claims to be a successful investment banker, which if true normally would make him one of the more reasonable and intelligent members of that species), is attacking Yves Smith for using the word "banksters" and calling what they do as "looting". http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/
It is very well worth reading for gems like this: > Sympathetic or not, however, I would also like to caution Ms. Smith. Like > many radical reformers, I suspect she would be surprised how little common > ground she has with other would-be radical reformers. It is always a > revelation to discover, as revolutionaries always have, just how little > agreement you have with your peers when it comes to deciding just exactly > which roots and branches of the ancien régime need to be trimmed. > Which is a susprisingly intelligent observation for an investment banker. Here's his (eloquent, but in the end weak) defense of his profession. Like many other econobloggers opining on the state of affairs in the world > of finance, Ms. Smith has gotten into the nasty habit of using the term > "banksters" to refer to members of the financial services industry. (It is > in the title of yet another > post<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/03/banksters-win-again-edition-1477536.html>of > hers today.) The overarching metaphor behind this coinage—which, I > emphasize again, is neither original nor limited to Ms. Smith—is that > commercial bankers, investment bankers, insurance company employees, and > presumably everyone else in the financial industry are uniformly engaged in > a vast, intentional, and irredeemably criminal enterprise. Ms. Smith > reinforces this metaphor often, including in the post dissected herein (with > the crack of "financiers [looting] taxpayers"), and implicitly in the title > of her new book, *ECONNED*. > > [...] > > These casual, unthinking insults would not bother me if I did not think > they lower and coarsen the important conversation we are having in society > and the blogosphere about financial reform. Sure, investment banking has its > fair share of crooks, but we are no different than the rest of society. Some > of us, closer to the top and more successful, perhaps, probably do have a > more highly developed sense of entitlement and aggressiveness than your > average bear. *But we are not criminals*. We work the system, hard, to > advance our own and our families' personal and professional interests, but > 99.9% of us are not out to rape and pillage the commonfolk of their daily > bread. To think otherwise is just plain stupid. > > At the same time, there are plenty of things wrong with investment banking > and the financial system at large. Big, important, pressing problems that > contributed to the last financial crisis and threaten to make the next one > worse. Making grandiose, nonsensical pronouncements that all bankers are > crooks just doesn't help matters, and it focuses attention and energy away > from real problems which need to be addressed posthaste. It poisons the > dialogue, it stifles voices it would behoove us to hear, and it lowers the > conversation to the lowest, cheapest common denominator of untrammeled, > impotent rage. This is not the kind of contribution bloggers should be > making to a rejuvenated public discussion of financial > reform<http://ultimibarbarorum.com/2010/03/07/econobloggers-need-their-crisis-back/> > . > > -raghu.
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