Blaming the system

I have many questions about the current financial debacle, but of one thing I am absolutely certain:

Human beings allowed and perpetrated it.

Understandably, certain individuals who were paid large sums of money and prestige, given fancy titles and offices, and vested with the power and responsibility to prevent the calamity, now wish to evade their responsibility and shift the blame for what has transpired. Take Treasury Secretary nominee Timmy Geithner, for example, as quoted in The New York Times:

“I believe that our regulatory system failed to adapt to the emergence of new risks,” Mr. Geithner said in a written response to questions that was made public on Friday by Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan. “The current financial crisis has exposed a number of serious deficiencies in our federal regulatory system.” [Emphasis added.]

I see. People are not to blame. The system failed!

Timmy sits before a Senate committee considering, at least in theory, whether he is a fit steward for the people’s money, after presiding – as a steward for the people’s money – over a long-running financial disaster of epic proportions, and is allowed to blame a disembodied system rather than real human beings for what happened. Does a single United States Senator hold him to account for this evasion?

Of course, not.

All sentient beings should be able to recognize that neither alien invaders nor machines nor bricks nor disembodied systems had anything to do with the meltdown of the financial markets. Human beings did this all by themselves.

I am not in the habit of making guarantees, but will guarantee this: new regulations will not solve the current crisis or prevent future ones, and rewarding those responsible for the present failure with continued responsibility of like kind will only perpetuate the disaster.