The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely. Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim.
On Wall Street the past year was filled with one opportunity after another to fix the myriad fundamental structural deficiencies — revealed all too painfully by the financial crisis — that continue to plague the nation’s economic outlook. But as we enter 2010, not a single one of the “systemic failures” in the financial system has been adequately addressed, let alone resolved. This ongoing failure to act in the face of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression is especially disappointing since President Barack Obama was elected, in part, on a promise to bring constructive and lasting change to the canyons of Wall Street.
Mohamed El-Erian, the highly respected chief portfolio manager for the Harvard Endowment, and currently chief investment officer for the global investment manager, PIMCO notes that the momentum for meaningful financial reform is stalling in spite of clear evidence that financial activities have far outpaced the regulatory infrastructure. And some banks are returning to the bad habits that almost destroyed them.
The Federal Reserve and the Treasury are preparing broad new rules that would force the financial industry to rein in excessive compensation schemes and commission practices that disproportionate made gazzillionaires at the expense of investors and taxpayers out of many financial executives – many just out of college – during the global financial meltdown.