Public Silence Greets Wall St. Blunders

Small savers are suffering, but giving financiers a free ride
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 19, 2008 3:10 PM CDT
Public Silence Greets Wall St. Blunders
A Wall Street street sign hangs near the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, June 6, 2008 in New York.    (AP Photo/Jin Lee)

America's financiers have driven the country into crisis with stunning recklessness, James Grant writes in the Wall Street Journal, but public anger seems strangely dormant. Populist politicians railed against Wall Street during past financial crises, Grant notes, but today's politicians appear largely uninterested in taking aim at the easy target.

They may be silent because past protests have already secured government-directed credit, Grant says, but that does not fully explain the lack of fury directed at those who have made a hash of high finance. "One might infer from the lack of popular anger that the credit crisis was God's fault," he observes, "rather than the doing of the bankers and the rating agencies and the government's snoozing watchdogs." (More Wall Street stories.)

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