Stanley Bing: What we know for sure

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 at 3:02 pm
来源：http://stanleybing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/09/23/what-we-know-for-sure/


If there’s one thing the Street hates, it’s uncertainty. Like mostof my neurotic friends, its mood swings inappropriately high on theslightest whiff of good news, and zooms to depressing depths at themerest suspicion of impending bad karma. Given the paucity of theformer and the plethora of the latter, it’s been a crazy ride lately,with trips to the moon closely followed by extended visits to thesewage system that runs beneath corporate capitalism on an all-toregular basis.

Like Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke, I would like to do whatever I canto help restore confidence and solidity to the marketplace. In supportof that effort, I hereby offer a few thoughts on what, even at thischallenging juncture, is not in any sort of doubt:

• An individual in danger of losing his or her mortgage will be worseoff, in the end, than the majority of executives working in theinstitution holding that mortgage;
• While investment banks may change their stripes, investment bankers will not;
• The bailout will most dramatically benefit those who created the crisis in the first place;
• The new levels of oversight and regulation that are implementedwill have the greatest impact on those firms which require it least;
• All the excesses and depredations foisted upon our poor economywill be back very soon, because it’s simply too boring to do businessor make obscene amounts of money by playing things straight;
• An extremely small number of highly fungible executives will bepunished for their actions; they will later emerge from prison tobecome philanthropists;
• An entire graduating class of pundits, senior managers, hedge fundspeculators and debunked risk-management geniuses will be jettisonedfrom the body of the system; they will appear almost immediately in thefinancial media playing the part of experts who can explain whys,wherefores and potential future courses of action;
• Wall Street will survive;
• Main Street will suffer;
• The rich will probably have to wait a while to get richer;
• The poor need suffer under no such limitation to achieve their customary status.

When the Soviet Union fell, all the Eastern European countries hadto reconstitute their governments. Former communist bureaucrats had toscramble, since the whole philosophical and operating infrastructureunder which they had professionally and personally prospered had beenyanked away. Today there are entirely new institutions governing thosenations, and in many cases the same bureaucrats who prospered under theold regime are still running the game from new offices, with newtitles, new letterhead, new committees to chair. I have no doubt as wetransition our economy to a new more equity-based model, the formerscions of the now-discredited system will once again rise to the apexof power under a brand new flag.

It’s not only cream that rises to the top.