In “The wolves bear no blame at all”, Gil Smart discusses an interview by Steve Kroft of author Michael Lewis on “60 Minutes”: “Wall Street, he told Kroft, could have and should have known that as the real estate boom went on, the quality of the mortgages being written, securitized and sold was deteriorating fast. But Lewis said no one wanted to see it; had the risk been acknowledged, the fees generated, profits made and bonuses paid would have ended.”
Smart observes “Ideology also plays a role, too. The meme (sic) on the right is that government has captured and threatens capitalism. The reality is the exact opposite: The banking industry has taken over the state. The power of money over government and society is increasing and metastasizing. And if government has failed, its failure stems from an unwillingness to battle these forces on behalf of the people it is supposed to represent.” (Click here to read more)
WATCHDOG: Other than the fact that we could not find “meme” in our unabridged dictionary, we consider this to be one of Smart’s best columns. It used to be that business persons made fortunes by creating industries and paid a significant portion of their profits into government for the benefit of society. We now have graduates of top law and business schools who specialize in spurious but legal financial transactions and who concentrate their efforts on how to profit from government programs and, when things go wrong, from government bailouts.
Three wags of the tail for Michael Lewis and a wag of the tail for Gil Smart!
Meme is a word. It’s newer.
meme [meem]–noun, a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.
Origin: 1976; and lt; Gk mīmeîsthai to imitate, copy; coined by R. Dawkins, Brit. biologist
Editor: Thanks. Our Random House, Unabridged Dictionary’s latest copyright is 2001. Any reader suggestions for one that is more update?