«WASTING MONEY PUTS YOU IN A REAL PARTY MOOD»

What all this means – and it's tough to disagree here with the informed doomsayers – is that the next crisis will be worse than the one just passed. By bailing out all but Lehman, world authorities have created the worst "moral hazard" problem in the history of finance. Knowing that Uncle Sam or Whitehall or the Diet will bail them out, financiers will continue to have every greed-driven incentive to grab for the effortless upfront fees from their reckless behaviour, knowing any cataclysmic losses will be "socialized."On Wall Street, The New York Times tells us in a Saturday report on how little that city's mainstay industry has changed, the term for moral hazard is "I.B.G." Or, "I'll be gone," bonus in hand, long before avarice run rampant puts my bank and the world economy into the tank

Toronto Star
Sept 15 2009