Columbia economist confirms what my mother has been saying for years

Jeffrey Sachs: Well, thank you very much for saying it and practicing it. I do believe – by the way, I’m just going to end here because I’ve been told I have to run to the U.N. in fact right now – I believe we have a crisis of values that is extremely deep, because the regulations and the legal structures need reform. But I meet a lot of these people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now. I’m going to put it very bluntly. I regard the moral environment as pathological. And I’m talking about the human interactions that I have. I’ve not seen anything like this, not felt it so palpably. These people are out to make billions of dollars and nothing should stop them from that. They have no responsibility to pay taxes. They have no responsibility to their clients. They have no responsibility to people, counterparties in transactions. They are tough, greedy, aggressive, and feel absolutely out of control, you know, in a quite literal sense. And they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent, and they have a docile president, a docile White House, and a docile regulatory system that absolutely can’t find its voice. It’s terrified of these companies.
If you look at the campaign contributions, which I happened to do yesterday for another purpose, the financial markets are the number one campaign contributors in the U.S. system now. We have a corrupt politics to the core, I’m afraid to say, and no party is – I mean there’s – if not both parties are up to their necks in this. This has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. It really doesn’t have anything to do with right wing or left wing, by the way. The corruption is, as far as I can see, everywhere. But what it’s led to is this sense of impunity that is really stunning, and you feel it on the individual level right now, and it’s very, very unhealthy.

(ADDED EMPHASIS)

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/jeffrey-sachs-calls-out-wall-street-criminality-and-pathological-greed.html#jh6KYxc3WGAEbZUL.99

Of course, my mother doesn't have to run off to the UN after imparting her wise words...........

Consoling remark for Jeffrey Sachs:  That's okay Jeffrey.  No less a philosopher than John Locke (errr, he did sort of believe in private property and profit-potential as a moral basis for society........) was once described [by one of my former teachers (B. Enc)] as holding the views which your grandmother would hold.  So, if the wisdom of Jeffrey Sachs resembles the wisdom of my mother (who is a grandmother), JS is no worse off than John Locke.

Footnote/Explanation:
I'm no Locke scholar.  Here I rely upon my memory of something Ellen Meiksins Woods said in her The Origin of Capitalism; A Longer View.  As I recall the book, she remarked at one point that Locke's view of property justified taking possession of property which was not being used to produce profits generated within a market.  I can't check right now, as I've not got access to the book.  However, at the time I read it, I thought it was the most interesting thing in the book.  (Yes, it's true, I'm not political philosopher!)