Over spring break, my family watched "The Princess and the Frog". After the movie ended, my wife and I explained to our children that mommy and daddy used to live in New Orleans and had been to the church where Princess Tiana was married. The kids seemed so excited by this news, we decided then and there that a G-Rated tour of New Orleans was in order. We left a few days later.
Of course, Audubon Zoo was on our to-do list. My boy loved the "stinky elephants." My oldest girl thought the lions looked sleepy and cuddly. I had to remind her that, as much as they looked like the stuffed animals in her room, the lions weren't for cuddling. They will eat you because, well, that's what hungry lions do.
I thought of our recent zoo trip when I read of the latest round of fraud eminating from Wall Street. I suspect many of the institutional investors that purchased interests in the mortgage backed securities deliberately designed by the banks to fail forgot investment banks, like hungry lions, are predators. They will gobble up your good parts and spit out what's left because, well, that's what investment banks do.
It is in this vein that I attach today's New York Times op-ed column written by Paul Krugman. As he says, "the fact is that much of the financial industry has become a racket - a game in which a handful of people are lavishly paid to mislead and exploit consumers and investors. And if we don't lower the boom on these practices [synthetic CDOs and the like], the racket will just go on."
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