I can imagine!
.........
From Mike Taibbi: July 7, 2009:
On The Everyone Was Doing It Excuse
The [Rolling Stone] article makes a very compelling case against Goldman Sachs, but I think the problems it identifies are pervasive in financial firms and corporate America in general, says Nell Minow, who is the co-founder of the Corporate Library, a research firm that tracks corporate-governance issues. We need to launch substantive financial reform rather than weighing the faults of one firm versus another. Minows point is this: spend too much time on Goldman and you miss the fact of how broadly the financial system and the regulations that are supposed to keep profiteers in check failed us. And shes right.
via Goldman Sachs vs. Rolling Stone: A Wall Street Smackdown TIME.
(snip)
According to Steven Gandel of Time, the problem with my piece is that it is get this too specific. According to the above passage, focusing on Goldman in particular when attempting to explain (in general) the crimes of Wall Street to ordinary readers is somehow a distraction from the real problem. To repeat:
spend too much time on Goldman and you miss the fact of how broadly the financial system and the regulations that are supposed to keep profiteers in check failed us.
I had to read that passage several times to even begin to grasp its ostensible meaning. Apparently this is the best argument that Time could come up with to discredit this article, that the rhetorical technique of using a specific example of a specific bank like Goldman to tell a broader story about Wall Street in general distracts readers from the more important issue of how government regulators failed to stop banks like Goldman! I mean, really, hows that for circular thinking? This is silly stuff even by Time magazines standards.
Ive been shocked by how many grown adult people seem to have swallowed this argument, that the argument against Goldmans behavior during the bubbles of recent decades is invalid because everyone was doing it and other banks, like for instance Morgan Stanley, were just as bad as Goldman was.
Two things about that. One, it isnt true, not really. By any reasonable measure Goldman is and has been the baddest guy on the block for a long time. When it comes to government influence, no other Wall Street company even comes close. And while maybe one might have made an argument that other players were more damaging to society before the crisis of last year, theres simply no question now, after the bailouts and especially after the AIG fiasco, that Goldman now reigns supreme in the area of insider advantage. To pick any other bank to tell the story of the rapidly growing influence of Wall Street on politics and the blurring of public and private roles would be a glaring journalistic oversight, and surely even Goldmans biggest supporters would admit this.
Two, even if it is true that everyone else was doing it: so what? Who cares? To me this response is highly telling. We published a piece accusing Goldman Sachs of systematically ripping off pensioners and other retail investors by sticking them with rafts of toxic mortgages it knew were losers, of looting taxpayer reserves to cover its bad bets made with AIG, of manipulating gas prices to massive detrimental effect, of helping to explode an internet bubble that caused over $5 trillion in wealth to disappear, and numerous other crimes and the response isnt Youre wrong, or We didnt do that shit, not us, but Well, Morgan did the same stuff, and Why arent you writing about Morgan?
(snip)
Normally I dont care so much when people criticize my work. It goes with the territory. But in this case, the response of a bank like Goldman and Goldmans supporters is characteristic of the subject matter in a way that is important to point out, even after the fact of publication. These are powerful people who know how to play the public relations game, have all the appropriate contacts, and have a playbook that they follow to discredit their critics. Whether its me now or the next guy who takes them on, theyre going to come back with some kind of charge, be it Everyone was doing it, or Were just smarter than the other guys, you cant blame us for that, or The real culprits are the ineffective regulators, something.
Theyre going to say that and more, but whether its this time or the next time, the important thing is to pay attention to what they dont say. And what they didnt say about this piece is that it was wrong. They didnt deny any of it. They said others were just as bad, they said I was a bad guy, they said it was a conspiracy theory. But they didnt say it was mistaken, and thats the only thing that matters.
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/07/07/on-the-everyone-was-doing-it-excuse/
Thanks for the link. I will go post another Update!