"...They Should Be Setting An Example"

Taibbi on Taibbi and AIG and who we should be careful not to blame:

These Wall Street players are enormously compensated, which supposedly means that society highly values their work and is willing to pay them a premium to do it. Having been given that kind of responsibility and trust, these assholes should not then force us to police them as tightly as we police those who we expect to steal from us, like third-rate car salesmen, telemarketers, hookers and three-card monty dealers. With that kind of money they should be setting an example. We are paying them as though they are leaders of society, so they should lead. Instead they ripped us off like common criminals. I mean, the level of morals here is astonishing. In my entire life I’ve never met a drug dealer who would even think about trying half the shit that banks like Goldman Sachs and Citibank pulled during these years.

Well, that’s not true — okay, I did once try to buy weed from a guy I didn’t know in Washington Square, and got ripped off. I was young and stupid. The guy sold me a bag of oregano and immediately, I mean immediately, took off running and disappeared down 8th street. Guys like that usually have a life expectancy of about ten minutes, because eventually they pick someone who isn’t some lily-livered white college student to sell oregano to and they get their heads beat in with lead pipes. That’s what happens in the actual world. In the world of high finance, what happens when they catch you pulling that kind of stunt is they give you fifty billion taxpayer dollars.