Bonus Fraud
The collapse of the financial system was not an unforeseen heart attack; it was a slow, progressive disease in which the doctor's advice was ignored while the patient continued fiddling like nothing was wrong.
The financial wizards of Wall Street accused their critics with a perverse sense of dismay; how could the Emperor have no clothes, they replied, did we not get fat performance bonuses for our good work?
Now that the dust of the market collapse has subsided, the public can see that greed, not performance, was the engine driving the dizzying fall.
The people who took those performance bonuses in the year before the collapse did so fraudulently, and if the taxpayers of this and the next generation have to pay for Wall Street's mistakes, then let us get back the property and bank accounts of these criminals so they may not enjoy their ill-gotten wealth and return this money to the public purse.
How ironic is it, that the Free World should pursue a man living in the caves of Pakistan and Afghanistan for destroying the World Trade Center.


Cliff Oswald