Decadence

There is an ingeniously specious logic to the proposition that the failure to prevent a wrong abnegates the duty to redress it. That said, the defenders of speculation have become amusingly untethered from the typical and traditional defense of investment banking and market capitalism, which is to say that it these are the mechanisms through which the capitalist economy apportions capital to new and productive enterprise. It is perhaps the most fundamental defense of market capitalism--that it is a system uniquely effective at raising money to fund production--and it goes totally unmentioned. From the President to the pages of the Washington Post, you'll hear a lot of talk about the so-called financial industry, but no talk about industry. Whether Goldman Sachs and its peer organizations broke any particular laws or committed any particular fraud is almost wholly beside the point. Far more germane and far more damning is that they exist in a purely speculative and entirely fictive parallel economy in which no productive activity takes place. I mean, at least Wal-Mart sells some shit.