by Richard Thieme
The cornerstone of capitalism, it has been said, is a handshake.
The legal embellishments that constitute the law books lining the shelves of any lawyer, those laws are footnotes to the many ways people have betrayed trust, betrayed the letter of the law, the spirit of the contract, the meaning of the handshake.
Trust, not money, makes the world go around. Money is an emblem of the exchange of trust. It doesn’t exist except as an invention.
And trust has been broken.
Yes, it’s all smoke and mirrors, and everyone who looked already knew that. That isn’t news. The news, as Alan Greenspan said pathetically in front of Congress, was that the moguls and bankers and investment gurus did not act according to their own self interest. They did not just risky things but insanely stupid risky things and thought they could hide from their karma. They betrayed the
trust of one another when they made deals, invented bogus instruments or used good ones unwisely, and they betrayed the trust of all of us. Nor will they pay the penalty they should. They never do. They never do.
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