There goes civilisation...

CG; it's interesting to have the view from the inside, from someone who favors this economic system. But I'm not convinced. This isn't just an argument between pro and anti capitalists. There have been prominent capitalists, such as George Soros, arguing against these particular *forms *of capitalism for several years. Soros isn't arguing for socialism but he is arguing that deregulation - the so called 'light touch' - has led to these problems. As many commentators have pointed out - again not all of them left wing - the neo liberals have been campaigning against state intervention for decades and now they are happy to accept state intervention, in the form of effective nationalisation of AIG for example. That's what people call socialism for the rich.
And anyway if your boyfriend is working all hours of the day five days a week then he's just like millions of other people in this country except that they do it for minimum wage. It may be a tough patch for him but it's a tough *life *for others. I have more sympathy for the cleaners and security guards at Lehmans who have lost their jobs this week than for the people we saw on the front of the papers carrying out cardboard boxes.
People do make mistakes and that's what's curious about your argument; that people are fallible individually, and companies fallible collectively, is why they can not be left to their own devices, there has to be oversight and the only entity that can do that is government. Self regulation, let alone trusting in the apparently mystical properties of markets has not worked. Allowing investment banks to borrow £30 for every £1 they have is not human error; it's a disasterous political policy formulated by neo liberals such as Bush (or the people who tell Bush what his policies are with the aid of a piece of paper and a crayon).
Paying into a pension fund is not greed; it's the only way to make sure you can buy food when you retire. Allowing a CEO to take home $22 million in bonuses last year, as happended at Lehmans, is another matter. When the short term rewards are so gigantic it is bound to affect judegement. I'm pretty sure it would affect mine. Which again is why people who have so much to gain by being so greedy and so cavalier can not be left to just get on with it; governments have to regulate and legislate.
I don't imagine that the people who work in banking are all immoral any more than I think all nurses and doctors are saints. As people they may be loving, generous and kind to their friends. That's neither here not there when thinking about the system in which they operate, other than the rather sad feeling that they are wasting their lives and talents. As am I, probably, ferrying round tapes of crappy adverts all day. I know I am not writing from any kind of moral highground, not even a moral molehill.
You work in banking, your friends are bankers you see the people involved and know they're not bad people. Well, not all of them. But in sticking up for your peers I think you're being too kind to this relatively recent and, as it's turned out untenable, unrestrained and idealogically driven market insanity.

Surely this intelligent, considered and balanced response has finally put this thread to bed.

"I don't imagine that the people who work in banking are all immoral any more than I think all nurses and doctors are saints. "

The above quote sums it all up