Looting Main Street

Tilbage fra ferie og dertilhørende sommerforkølelse kan man altid lune sig med hjertevarme fortællinger fra den finansielle verden. Rolling Stone (magasinet, ikke bandet) har dykket ned i pølen med swaps, offentlige låneventyr og generel grådighed at large. Resultatet er Looting Main Street, en glimrende artikel om finanskrisens hædersmænd. Med udgangspunkt i et meget stort kloaksystem i en meget lille by i Alabama giver artiklen storartet et bredt indblik i de skrupelløse investeringer og direkte kriminelle handlinger, der var med til at køre den vestlige økonomi i sænk:

In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71 — but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world’s grandest toilet — “the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants” is how one county worker put it. What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street — and misery for people like Lisa Pack.

Via ham her