Image above: Bill Ackman of Pershing Square, as Montezuma, (not a banker, but I like the image).The image is not meant to be critical, but came from a thought I had once, (on Halloween, 2008), imagining what it might be like if wealth could be represented by the clinking and jingling of treasure which one wore, as Kings did in other times. For example, here is a recently uncovered tomb of a Peruvian King, who was buried encased in a mountain of bling.
Today, a group of 13 bankers met with President Obama, to discuss their role in the economic recovery of 2009. A reporter in the financial media called them “the new kings”. It is true, they are kings in many ways. Those who live within in their land, are subject to their governance, whim, and overseeing of profit and loss. Yet they are only men.
The stock market hovered, making only small constricted movements in either direction, as if bound by indecision, both before and after the meeting. Many on Wall Street had thought Obama had called them together to chastise them, and warn them against “giving back too soon” the TARP funds they has borrowed from the government months earlier. But after the meeting, which occurred behind closed doors, the Bankers interviewed said, Obama had made no such request. Yet the financial news media insisted on with their story; they said it seemed to them, that the bank CEO’s were much less sure about giving back the TARP funds after the meeting. But had this been communicated and observed? No. But how they hoped to sustain their story.
