Blame and Responsibility

Societies will blame their ordinary members for the problems of the society. Obviously, this is complete nonsense, as any society's ordinary members have neither the power to either change or to direct the operations of the society. The powers and prerogatives rest with the elite of the society and those elite jealously guide their privileges. So let's take an obvious current example. America has problems and those problems are of a financial nature. Americans are stigmatized as being both foolish and extravagant; since their improvident actions have directly resulted in the present credit crisis, causing both massive unemployment and bankruptcy. That's the story that's been told, and it's absolute nonsense. What happened was this: financial institutions, the banks, the brokerages and insurance companies set up off-balance sheet investment investment vehicles in order to avoid capitalization requirements and to evade state domestic taxation. The financial institution personnel creating the investment vehicles amounted to, at most; just a few hundred individuals, less than a thousand. The vehicles were all situated in tax-haven countries. They're called qualifying special purpose entities and they're utilized to sell-off packages of bank bad loans. The vehicles amounted to over thirty trillion dollars, which is double the GDP of the USA, and they're worthless. The truth is: American public was blamed for the foolishness of few.