While reading Dan’s comment I tried to allow myself to feel the ‘revenge’ and it was powerful. I guess, I also tried to rationalize my emotions immediately I realized they were uncomfortable – despising someone, wanting to hurt someone, wanting to feel better than the guilty, a kind of vicious self-righteousness. So, I resisted the urge to rationalize, as much as I could, and went with the flow. Wow – what a sensation of pleasure! Like I might imagine it feels like to be a ‘sadistic psychopath’. I have often wondered where the pleasure was in inflicting pain on other people. This seems to be it.

Let’s hope the plan works – because if it doesn’t we’ll all suffer; but let’s also hope that the governement come up with a system, or at least a spin, that allows the mob to feast on their pound of flesh and quench their thirst for revenge. Afterall, if it’s in a blood then perhaps we’ve just got to face it.

Martin

We met at MIT and I’m excited to get back in touch. My comment isn’t directly related to revenge but it does tip the conversation back toward behavioral theory. Bazerman and others have a new working paper on what is essentially moral luck. In their studies subject non-normatively rate an act as less ethical when there is a negative outcome and more ethical when there is a positive outcome — as compared to control groups that judged the act “without an outcome.” Like an optical illusion, juxtaposing a questionable act with different outcomes can make the act itself look different. In this case the actions of Wall Street few thought the actions immoral until there was a negative outcome. Perhaps this is moral luck at work. Or perhaps it is the negative outcome itself that drives a need to assign blame – a scapegoat theory. I have posted thoughts on both concepts on my own blog at

http://www.prospecttheory.net

Citations on the working papers mentioned are below:

Francesca Gino, Don A. Moore, and Max H. Bazerman, “No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments,” HBS Working Paper Number: 08-080, February 2008

Gino, Francesca, Lisa Lixin Shu, and Max H. Bazerman. “Nameless + Harmless = Blameless: When Seemingly Irrelevant Factors Influence Judgment of (Un)ethical Behavior.” Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 09-020, August 2008.

1. Hold themselves accountable (by name… not House or Senate but by individual names) if this thing doesn’t work. I want to know who screwed up!
2. Agree to some punishment if their plan doesn’t do what they are promising it will do. Punishment and an agreement that they will resign their post… Immediately!

I want to see some accountability before I will agree to this approach.

10 years ago, the House was in the hands of the Republicans, not the Democrats. Remember Newt Gingrich? He became Speaker in 1992.

Anti-redlining laws came in in the 1970′s So they’ve been around nearly 40 years. It is really a stretch to think that this has any causal relationship to what’s going on now.

Furthermore, it strikes me as a distraction from what really went on, which was massive fraud perpetrated by mortgage brokers, and finance people further up the food chain.

I see them as more responsible than the homeowners. If your child asks you to eat the whole batch of cookies and you say, “sure, go ahead”, who’s responsible? Kids want to eat cookies, people want to buy homes. If the guy says, “Yes, you can get a loan!” Why would they argue?

And I sure as hell wouldn’t want any of those subprime brokers making loans of MY money.

However, who *is* responsible?

As the saying goes:
Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

With personal consumer debt at such staggering levels, with many local and state governments operating under budget deficits, and with our own federal government operating a $10 trillion deficit (that’s $10,000,000,000,000.00, for my kids who like to see all the zeroes) are we really all that surprised there is a need for a $700 billion ($700,000,000,00.00) cash injection to save our “private sector” economy?

We reap what we sow. Depression-era survivors have great insight. Pay cash. Credit used conservatively and wisely is good. Credit used to satisfy impulses is not good. Excercise self-restraint. Know about your investments – don’t just give Uncle Warren money to invest in his latest tip that’s a winner – unless your Uncle Warren is Warren Buffett! :^)

As to why revenge “feels so good” – mutate the “Golden Rule” – Do unto others as they have done unto you.
Then again, shouldn’t we take it one step further – Do unto others before they do it to you?

So is this the revenge of the masses? Probably, and they want to take this opportunity to snipe the hands of wall street. I think people don’t feel the bailout has enough revenge appealing restrictions to change the excessive compensation of the wall street folks. And these compensations was justified by “we take a lot of risk”. Well people are saying if you didn’t share the booty when it was good then why are we sharing the garbage now its bad?

I think one item that would appeal to people is to put a 5yr mandatory requirement to invest 3% of income in society like infrastructure repair or sponsor social programs. Wall street has to repair their image in main street.

surned