Too Big To Fail

The phrase "too big to fail" has been bothering me intensely during this last several weeks of bailout news. The idea that a public corporation is too big to fail, that its failure would destroy the whole economy, is something that just seems oddly circular in its logic. Wouldn't a more succinct question be, "Why are they so big?" or "How big is big enough?"

Somewhere between enlightened self-interest and unbridled greed, there has to be a line drawn. There has to be a ceiling to this accrual of power, wherein the interests of the society at large supercedes the undue influence of narrower agendas. To operate upon the premise that there is only one ideological set of answers that come in a package for the "right" or the "left" seems much too simplistic.

"Who benefits?" and "Follow the Money" are phrases that mean much more to my view in the search for answers to what's presently going on than any "too big to fail" excuse for bailing out profit making public corporations. This wide scale debacle simply can't be laid upon the carpet and analyzed as some sort of problem that nobody could've possibly foreseen, that nobody could've done anything to prevent, or that serious violations of trust haven't been taking place on a regular basis for years.

People have definitely crossed the line between enlightened self-interest and unbridled greed. Our society needs new rules to keep that kind of thing in check, but it really has nothing to do with the size of CEOs' paychecks. It has much more to do with the idea that a business can actually accrue so much power and wealth that it becomes "too big to fail" while the people who run it are completely free to do whatever the hell they want... to the utter detriment of the society at large.

Update: The Ponzi Scheme at CitiBank, in today's NY Post.