Our Common Enemy . . .

In a recent column James Stewart in The New York Times wrote an article titled “A Golden Touch Turns Leaden”

• “No wonder Occupy Wall Street took its protest this week to East 86th Street and the 28,500-square-foot limestone mansion owned by the billionaire hedge fund manager John A. Paulson. What better symbol of the excesses of Wall Street than Mr. Paulson, who made billions betting on the real estate collapse and whose opulent surroundings stand in such contrast to the million of Americans who have lost their homes?”

I have a slight objection to demonizing one person like #OWS did. Though I really liked the article James Stewart wrote, still, we are not taking into consideration our own complicity in this financial mess.

• “Mr. Paulson made more than $15 billion for his hedge funds by betting on the collapse of the mortgage-backed securities market in 2007 and 2008 . . . The media branded him the man with the Midas touch. Institutional and individual investors rushed to give him their money, eagerly paying management fees of 2 percent plus 20 percent of any gains, and pushed his funds’ assets earlier this year to $38 billion . . .”

Investors did rush to give him their money. I feel it is our collective hunger for wanting more, more of money, more of stuff, more of relationships, more of . . . that the system exploits. The system is rigged to exploit our greed. If I don't have greed then there is nothing for it to exploit.

• “That isn’t to say Mr. Paulson did anything illegal. He wasn’t charged by the S.E.C. or accused of any wrongdoing, and it’s hard to fault him for taking advantage of a perk Goldman offered him. Others did it too; JPMorgan Chase recently settled similar charges, suggesting the practice was widespread. But Mr. Paulson’s was the first and most visible case, and fairly or not, it indelibly linked his name to what the S.E.C. labeled fraud . . .”
• “He helped select the mortgages he was betting against, the ones most likely to default, something Goldman failed to tell the party on the other side of the bet. This wasn’t a level playing field, which contributed to the protesters’ allegations that Wall Street is a game rigged to benefit the wealthy and powerful . . .”

The system is so corrupt that it is quite amazing that something like this is not illegal! Way to go #OWS. Our focus should be big money and big business that have completely bought our lives lock stock and barrel.

• “What’s surprising isn’t that Mr. Paulson’s returns have crashed to earth, or even that his reasoning this year has so far proved so spectacularly and consistently wrong. It’s that in lionizing Mr. Paulson and handing their money over to him, so many people succumbed to the enduring myth of the financial genius . . .”

We are the ones we have been waiting for . . . In trusting hedge fund managers to make money for us we are both lionizing their capabilities and demonizing them for taking advantage of it. The common enemy of both of us is really greed. Let’s say there is a universal pot of greed that has been filled and is overflowing and we are finding it untenable because I have woken up and realized I'm a slave. And, yes, let’s say 75% of the universal pot of greed is filled by corrupt Wall Street practitioners and big business. We do have to take responsibility for filling the rest of the 25%. Unless we take responsibility and do our part in not succumbing to our individual pennies of greed we put in the pot then the pot will never really become empty. I have to respond to the challenges of the times by removing my penny from the pot and looking honestly within myself and seeing how is it that I can eliminate greed from my life. This is in addition to the external protests. We have to do both internal and external work for things to pan out in a more sustainable manner. If we don’t honestly acknowledge our culpability in the whole pot brimming over we are playing the blame game and becoming a slave without owning our spiritual power.

In my next post, I will write more about the slave and the master. Thanks for reading.

Blessings,

Shireen