Generation-X culture vs Boomer culture

[Trevor]

It seems foolish to excuse someone just because they're in the same generation; it doesn't matter. Course, Madoff seems to be one of the only people actually going to jail. If this was a movie, I'd find the plot too implausible, but here we are. I still have some hope that at least some of these people will get what they deserve once everything goes to hell.

[Tom Acre]

Who cares what generation they belong to? They deserve to be serving 20-year prison sentences.

I agree.

In my experience, that's what a Boomer would say, but
not what a Gen-Xer would say.

John

That is completely untrue. Everyone I know would love to see ALL of these fraudsters behind bars for 20+ years.

You're equivocating between the question of person responsibility and the broader question of how this constellation of institutions became so corrupt.

[John]

> You're equivocating between the question of person responsibility
> and the broader question of how this constellation of institutions
> became so corrupt.

There's what's wrong with Xers. You claim that you want everyone to
go to jail, but when it comes to describing what's really going on,
you make some vague reference to an institution corrupted by some
unnamed boomers.

Institutions don't commit crimes. People do. Institutions don't go
to jail. People do.

By blaming the corrupt institution, you make a vague, unfocused claim
that some unnamed Boomers caused the problem, so no one goes to jail.
Blaming the institution is just another Xer technique to avoid blaming
other Xers for the massive crimes they've perpetrated in the financial
crisis and elsewhere.

John

[Trevor]

> You're equivocating between the question of person responsibility
> and the broader question of how this constellation of institutions
> became so corrupt.

There's what's wrong with Xers. You claim that you want everyone to
go to jail, but when it comes to describing what's really going on,
you make some vague reference to an institution corrupted by some
unnamed boomers.

Institutions don't commit crimes. People do. Institutions don't go
to jail. People do.

By blaming the corrupt institution, you make a vague, unfocused claim
that some unnamed Boomers caused the problem, so no one goes to jail.
Blaming the institution is just another Xer technique to avoid blaming
other Xers for the massive crimes they've perpetrated in the financial
crisis and elsewhere.

John

I have a hard time coming up with someone who doesn't deserve a share of the blame. The people involved in financial firms committed fraud, and even those who didn't said nothing about it. Many members of our government (of both political parties) turned a blind eye to it and benefited from it, attacking the members who saw what was going on and tried to do something about it. I'd lay it even on average people who saw a way to screw people over and bought homes that they knew they couldn't afford, planning on simply flipping them, believing that the bubble would last forever.

[John]

> I have a hard time coming up with someone who doesn't deserve a
> share of the blame. The people involved in financial firms
> committed fraud, and even those who didn't said nothing about
> it. Many members of our government (of both political parties)
> turned a blind eye to it and benefited from it, attacking the
> members who saw what was going on and tried to do something about
> it. I'd lay it even on average people who saw a way to screw
> people over and bought homes that they knew they couldn't afford,
> planning on simply flipping them, believing that the bubble would
> last forever.

I agree with you.

So tell me: Why were there thousands of criminal referrals in the
1980s savings and loan crisis, when the Boomers were regulators, and
there have been ZERO criminal referrals in the current much bigger
crisis, when Xers are the regulators? Why?

[Trevor]

Hard to believe they were actually able to do that, since Boomers aren't exactly known for competence in management. In the 1980s, most of the regulators were either Boomers and I would bet that at the time, there were still a fair amount of older Silent regulators keeping an eye on things. In the 2000s, most of them were retired or dead, so it seems like you have a similar problem with the watchdogs themselves. The Boomers are blind and the X-ers were indifferent. In all fairness, many in Generation X did try to do something, but were silenced, both in finance and politics. If there's no limit to how far you're willing to go, you've got a big advantage.

[CrosstimbersOkie]

I've spent a little time in the private sector and I can't tell that it's significantly different, except that you get better feedback as to your effectiveness in the private sector because the market either accepts your efforts or it doesn't. And I doubt that most Gen-Xers would not support the prosecution of criminals. We are the biggest incarcerated generation in US history and the biggest incarcerators.

One thing the military teaches you is that you can take a mediocre individual and turn them into a pretty decent performer with the right regimen. The converse is true. You can take a mediocre citizen in the moral sense, and turn them into a thug with the right regimen. Boomers, through their juvenile incompetence as a generation, have succeeded in manufacturing criminals via their institutional "leadership."

But it's the Nomads who get blamed for the chaos created by perpetually juvenile Prophets.

[John]

> Hard to believe they were actually able to do that, since Boomers
> aren't exactly known for competence in management. In the 1980s,
> most of the regulators were either Boomers and I would bet that at
> the time, there were still a fair amount of older Silent
> regulators keeping an eye on things. In the 2000s, most of them
> were retired or dead, so it seems like you have a similar problem
> with the watchdogs themselves. The Boomers are blind and the X-ers
> were indifferent. In all fairness, many in Generation X did try to
> do something, but were silenced, both in finance and politics. If
> there's no limit to how far you're willing to go, you've got a big
> advantage.

And yet they DID do that. You don't understand the Boomer culture.
The Boomer culture blames everyone -- not some vague institution, but
actual specific people. That's what Boomers started doing in the
1960s, and they spent the rest of their lives doing the same thing,
blaming Silents, Boomers and Gen-Xers. Boomers see sending a criminal
to jail as a duty to society. Boomers LOVE this.

Gen-Xers loathe Boomers for this, and they react by doing the
opposite, refusing to blame anyone for anything, except in the vague
sense of blaming unnamed Boomers for everything.

I saw this behavior in feminists when I was writing on gender issues
in the 1990s. Feminists blamed every ill in the world on "men," no
matter what the situation. This reached a peak in 2001, when Andrea
Yates brutally killed her five children, after planning it for months.
Katie Couric and other feminists refused to blame her, and many called
her a victim of a "misogynistic society." In fact, Couric began a
nationwide fund-raising drive.

And anyone who's ever been in a divorce court knows that feminist
social workers wouldn't blame a mother for feeding her kids to a meat
grinder if she (the social worker) could get some money out of it.
Feeding kids to a meat grinder could never be any woman's fault,
because no matter what she does, she's a poor victim of the
misogynistic society.

So, the same attitude was adopted by Gen-Xers in general, who
committed horrible crimes -- knowingly creating trillions of dollars
worth of fraudulent synthetic securities and selling them to innocent
investors, and not giving a shit who got hurt, because, after all,
they were just innocent victims of the mean old Boomers.

Incidentally, this is not new. Germans in the Lost Generation who
exterminated Jews in concentration camps were not guilty of anything.
They were just poor innocent victims of Hitler.

John

[Tom Acre]

> You're equivocating between the question of person responsibility
> and the broader question of how this constellation of institutions
> became so corrupt.

There's what's wrong with Xers. You claim that you want everyone to
go to jail, but when it comes to describing what's really going on,
you make some vague reference to an institution corrupted by some
unnamed boomers.

Institutions don't commit crimes. People do. Institutions don't go
to jail. People do.

By blaming the corrupt institution, you make a vague, unfocused claim
that some unnamed Boomers caused the problem, so no one goes to jail.
Blaming the institution is just another Xer technique to avoid blaming
other Xers for the massive crimes they've perpetrated in the financial
crisis and elsewhere.

John

It is not vague. Why focus on the institutions (banks, brokerage firms, large companies, etc.) instead of just individuals? Its simply because individuals could not have perpetrated fraud to this depth and scale on their own. The REPROBATES who created the credit derivatives could have sat in their basements working away 24/7 until the day they died to no effect, if they had not been given positions and power within large, wealthy financial institutions.

I suggest you take some time to study organizational leadership, a branch of organizational theory, a branch of group dynamics, etc.

POLICIES, PROCEDURES, and PRACTICES are SET and ENFORCED by LEADERSHIP thereby creating the CORPORATE CULTURE. Along with leadership BOOMERS have the RESPONSIBILITY and DUTY to SET and ENFORCE these rules within their organizations. FOR the past 20 years, due to their visceral CONTEMPT for the rules (created by Silents and G.I.s) combined with their narcissism and greed, BOOMERS have created and shaped corrupt institutions and organizations to make money and to suit their narcissistic whims neglecting any and all costs to society.

I witnessed BOOMERS gutting the POLICIES and internal controls of organizations to make themselves money and gain personal wealth and power. I saw BOOMERS get rid of anyone honest enough to stand up to them. And I saw them handsomely reward REPROBATES who served their whims and made them money. I saw BOOMERS turn basically ethical organizations, corporations and institutions into bastions of corruption for personal gain. I lived it.

The Xer REPROBATES who became their henchmen are every bit as guilty, and I quite frankly despise them. I would love to see them ALL pay, first with every cent they ever stole using their nefarious schemes and then with their freedoms. I don't absolve anyone, now why don't you face the absolute indisputable FACT that BOOMERS are responsible for creating the institutions that "perpetrated the financial crisis"?

[John]

Once again, everything you say is true, but completely irrelevant.
It's not against the law to be narcissitic, nor has anyone ever been
sent to jail for creating the wrong kind of corporate culture.

Institutions and cultures don't go to jail. People do.

In the savings and loan crisis, the regulators in the Boomer culture
investigated the policies and actions that you talk about, and made
thousands of criminal referrals.

In today's financial crisis, the regulators in the Gen-X culture are
not investigating the policies and actions that you talk about, and
are making NO criminal referrals.

The reason that the Gen-X culture is so toxic is not because people
commit crimes -- that always happens -- but because Gen-X regulators
refuse to investigate the crimes and send people to jail. In other
words, in the 1980s if you committed a crime you go to jail. In the
2000s, if you commit a crime, then in all but the rarest of
circumstances, not only do you not go to jail, but you're painted as
an innocent victim of Boomers -- and you go scot free. That's why
there's no downside risk to lying, fraud and extortion, and that's why
we have a financial crisis.