Falling Like The Berlin Wall Poem by gershon hepner

Falling like the Berlin Wall, the Brothers Lehmann
collapsed, and quickly brought Dow Markets down
Unlearned, economically I’m just a layman,
but there’s been little joy in Wall Street town
since this collapse, and though the President has tried
to put together once again its pieces,
a new Jerusalem won’t rise, the Street has died,
and people re-examine Marx’s thesis,
because they realize that bankers have been liars,
and capital for the unfittest thrives.
Such disillusion surely will bring false messiahs,
exacerbating ruin of our lives.
We look for scapegoats, while regarding Brothers Lehmann
as Mordecai saw all the sons of Haman.

Inspired by Michiko Kkutani’s review in the NYT, January 19, of Joseph Stiglitz’s “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy” (Skepticism for Obama’s Fiscal Policy”) :
In a November 2008 Op-Ed article for The New York Times, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote that a huge stimulus package — as much as $1 trillion over two years — was needed to turn the Great Recession into a robust recovery and that new regulations were needed to change the destructive behavior of Wall Street that had brought about the fiscal calamities in the first place. Some four months later, he wrote another Op-Ed piece for The Times in which he assailed the Obama administration’s plans for dealing with ailing banks, arguing that it was “a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.” He went on to characterize the administration’s approach as “ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses.” Mr. Stiglitz’s new book, “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, ” expands these populist arguments further. He deconstructs the causes of the Great Recession of 2008, assesses the responses to the crisis by the Bush and Obama administrations and lays out suggestions for how America might use this “near-death experience” to address flaws in its economic system and reconfigure itself for the 21st century — a century in which it faces daunting problems like a ballooning deficit and trade imbalance, mounting job losses in the manufacturing sector and challenges from China and other countries….
Mr. Stiglitz writes, of course, as a proud Keynesian, and his analysis of the recession of 2008 and its aftermath reflects his overall philosophy. For that matter, many of the arguments in this volume echo those he made in earlier books like “Globalization and Its Discontents, ” and they underscore his beliefs about the limitations of “market fundamentalism” (“the notion that unfettered markets, all by themselves, can ensure economic prosperity and growth”) and the essential role that governments must play in regulating markets. Indeed, Mr. Stiglitz concludes in these pages that the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 may be to market fundamentalism what “the fall of the Berlin Wall was to communism”: “The problems with the ideology were known before that date, but after it no one could really defend it. With the collapse of great banks and financial houses and the ensuing economic turmoil and chaotic attempts at rescue, the period of American triumphalism is over.” In another chapter Mr. Stiglitz argues that “the failures in our financial system are emblematic of broader failures in our economic system, and the failures of our economic system reflect deeper problems in our society” — including growing inequities of wealth, a lack of accountability on the part of business and political leaders, and an emphasis on short-term gains as opposed to long-term benefits.

1/19/10